


Reinvent Colors and Reinvent Time

by WhiteCeilings



Series: Wanda/Rumlow Chaptered Fics [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Asexuality, Asexuality Spectrum, Awesome Wanda Maximoff, BAMF Wanda Maximoff, BDSM, Bondage, Character Study, Contracts, Dom Clint Barton, Dom Rumlow, Dom Steve Rogers, Dom/sub, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Impact Play, Magic, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Non-Sexual Submission, POV Wanda Maximoff, Power Exchange, Power Imbalance, Praise Kink, Romance, Sub Pietro Maximoff, Sub Wanda Maximoff, Telekinesis, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:34:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24137452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteCeilings/pseuds/WhiteCeilings
Summary: God played a cruel joke when he made Wanda not only asexual, but also a sub. The issue was just compounded when she was given powers, and suddenly dropping didn’t just mean going into a depressive episode, but becoming potentially dangerous for everyone around her. The Avengers have put a system into place to keep her from dropping, but in truth, she doesn’t trust any of them to non-sexually dom her. The only person she does trust is Brock Rumlow: former member of Hydra, and current pain in the Avengers' collective ass. What could go wrong?Includes non-sexual kink, attempted accuracy at portraying an ace character, Wanda's badass powers (and how everyone belittles them), and the only storyline with a straight relationship you ever need to read.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Pietro Maximoff, Pietro Maximoff & Wanda Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff & Steve Rogers, Wanda Maximoff/Brock Rumlow, Wanda Maximoff/Steve Rogers
Series: Wanda/Rumlow Chaptered Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858471
Comments: 74
Kudos: 82





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceGuanaco](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceGuanaco/gifts).



> Dedicated to AceGuanaco— I hope you like it! 
> 
> Note on asexuality: This fic was written with the goals of 1) writing an accurate asexual character, and 2) depicting a non-sexual, but still kinky relationship. Personally, I am not asexual, and though I did a lot of research/nagging of AceGuanaco, there may still be things that are inaccurate. Please let me know! With that said, in this story Wanda is ace, but not aromantic, so she still desires a romantic relationship, and that line between romance and sexuality is sometimes a fine one. But, I have really enjoyed writing this story, and I hope you all will really like it!
> 
> The title is based on a lyric from the song "Pinocchio: A Soliloquy" by Kai Straw. I think it’s pretty powerful, which is why I chose it to represent Wanda's character. Give the song a listen the next time you’re in an intense mood, it’s a bop.

It’s thundering both outside the apartment building, and inside Wanda’s head. Her hair is flattened down from the water, sticky against her skin, and her clothes are soaked through. Really, there is no good reason she should’ve been out in the rain. 

No good reason that is, except for the steadily blinking yellow light on her wrist monitor. 

She does her best not to look at it as she marches down the hallway. She left her bike out front, and she wasn’t wearing a helmet. Her phone is back at the tower, charging on her dresser— no tracking. Her boots leave wet footprints on the cement floor. 

He opens the door before she even knocks, which says something about how bad the situation is. She freezes, staring at him, and he opens the door wider for her to come in. 

“I could smell you from inside,” he comments gruffly. “Come on.”

Rumlow’s apartment is much like Rumlow: clean, simple, and militant. There are little details though, that show that, much like Rumlow, there is more to the apartment than what meets the eye; like the full spice rack, organized DVD collection, and blue plaid throw pillows. Everything smells like him, and Wanda finds herself taking in a deep inhale through her nose, already calming down. 

“Sorry,” she says, a moment too late. “I should’ve texted.”

“S’fine,” he mumbles, gruff. On someone else, Wanda might have thought it sarcastic, or self-deprecating, but not with Rumlow. Rumlow was a Dom, and a powerful one at that. When he says “it’s fine”, that’s exactly what he means.

She can feel his presence behind her as he steps into her space, slowly, giving her body the opportunity to grow comfortable with him. Regardless of his brash, dominating nature, Rumlow has never taken anything from her that she didn’t freely give. He cares more about consent than more people she knows, which is saying something, because she lives with the Avengers, supposedly the best of the best. But just because they were honorable didn’t mean they weren’t conservative. 

Rumlow pressed his body carefully against her’s, molding them together. Hands hands came around her waist, locking her in, and he nuzzled at her wet hair with his nose, brushing past it to rub at her neck. This was his way of saying hello; touching her, showing affection towards her, pressing skin to skin like he could mark her with his scent, like a dog. That wasn’t possible, of course— Doms and Subs released certain scents, when experiencing strong hormones, but they couldn’t mark each other, couldn’t scent bond or anything like the things Wanda read about in werewolf novellas. She was thankful for that, because if she came back to the tower smelling of another Dom every couple days, there was no  _ way  _ Steve wouldn’t notice.

One of Rumlow’s hands strayed down Wanda’s stomach, soft and intimate, but instead of doing anything illicit he took her wrist in hand, grumbling slightly when he saw the color of the light. “How’d it get so bad? You were blue yesterday.”

The light system was on a color scale from blue to red, with blue meaning her hormones were perfectly in check, and red meaning they were spiking, and a drop was practically inevitable. The goal was to never get to red; if she dropped as a result of hormones, the dangers could be intense, ranging from a major depressive episode to flights of violence. It was especially important given the nature of her powers. To prevent this, the Avengers had come up with a system where if the light on her wrist turned orange, she had to be forcibly dropped by her legal Dom, Steve. But being forcibly dropped was humiliating, and it was impossible to consent during a drop. Besides, as a precondition to becoming an Avenger, she’d had to sign a contract, giving Steve full permission to do whatever he felt was necessary to make her drop. 

_ Whatever  _ he felt was necessary. 

Really, was it a surprise she turned to someone else for help?

Rumlow started rocking from side to side, his comforting grip on her waist causing her to rock with him. “You have anything in particular you want to do?”

Wanda hummed, trying to stay present in the moment, which wasn’t always an easy task when she was with him. Her body knew this place, and her mind was used to the space being a place where she could relax and forget her troubles. “Not really. I just want to make you happy.”

He made a pleased noise, and instantly she felt herself fight a smile. All she wanted was to make him proud of her.

“Good girl,” he mumbles in her ear, kissing right above it. “Go to the kitchen and pour us both glasses of water, no ice. Then come back here.”

“Yes sir.” She does so, and when she comes back she finds him sprawled out on the couch, one knee propped up and one arm behind his head. She sets the glasses on the side table, and at his instruction climbs onto his lap, straddling him. Luckily, he’s folded a blanket over his clothed crotch, keeping any potential hard-ons hidden. Logically, she knows that it’s natural for him to get an erection from their play, but she doesn’t want to see it. Though it may not seem like it, their intimacy is non-sexual, meaning all respective genitalia stays out of it. 

In this position, with Rumlow laying so casually and Wanda perched on top of him, it almost looks as though she’s the one in the position of power, though they both know that’s not the case. Underneath him, Rumlow is corded with muscles, visible through his tight-cut shirt. She knows first hand just how strong he is, how easy it is for him to pick her up, toss her around. Even now, as his thumb smoothed the side of her hip, she can feel the kinetic energy between him, as if he’s just waiting to jump. His body is relaxed, but his hooded eyes are intent, and he knows what he wants. 

And she’s sitting on top of him, nothing but a blanket and a few layers of clothes between them. It’s good they don’t have sex, because if the tension is this thick when they haven’t even done anything yet, she doesn’t want to know what it’d be like if they went all the way. The thought makes her stomach clench: sex is very much not for her. 

A few feet to the side, something rattles, and Wanda drops her eyes, trying to contain herself. She doesn’t have to look to know it’s her powers, out of hand, as always. She’s at such a heightened state already that it’s hard to control them, and she has to search through her mind for the place where she’s sending out signals to the cup that’s hovering just an inch in the air, vibrating with energy. 

Rumlow looks over, taking in the cup surrounded by a red glow, and in one smooth move he grabs both of her wrists and yanks her forwards. She gasps, and the cup slams onto the table, shattering. Like this, she’s posed right over him, their chests nearly touching, her thighs aching slightly at the strain of keeping her balance while straddling his hips. 

“Those glasses are expensive,” Rumlow mutters, and Wanda ducks her head, embarrassed. Her humiliation comes not from messing up, but from the knowledge that he really doesn’t give a  _ shit  _ about the glass. His following order comes anyway: “Clean it up.”

Her powers are easiest to manipulate when she has the use of her hands, but his grip on her wrists isn’t loosening anytime soon, so she has to concentrate. She reaches out in her mind, feeling through the space of the apartment until she can find the shards, and latch onto them. She knows without looking that they’re rising up now, every last shard coming to rest in a perfect little pile on the table. 

“You’re so good,” Rumlow comments, switching his grip on her wrists. It only takes one of his large hands to hold both of her wrists, and then he can use the other hand to stroke a thumb across her cheek, brush her damp hair behind her ear. She’s an Avenger, and it only takes one of his non-enhanced hands to hold her down.

“You’re so wet,” he says, then breaks out laughing, and she has no choice but to hide her face in his shirt, feeling the movement of his chest as he laughs. “Sorry, sorry, I meant your clothes are wet from the rain. Go get changed, yeah?”

She pulls back enough to see his face, smiling smally. “You’re in a nice mood today,” she purrs, accent heavier as it tended to do when she was in this headspace. 

He scowls, and pinches the outside of her thigh. “I’m always nice to you. Now go get changed, before I decide to be mean.”

He releases her hands, so she goes, knowing he means business. His time in the army instilled a sharp sense of efficiency in him, meaning that while he was willing to be patient, he wasn’t willing to wait around at the whim of a subordinate.

In his bedroom, Wanda opens the one drawer dedicated specifically to her. Inside are some of her toiletries, an extra change of clothes, and the outfit she typically wears when they do things like this. She prefers not to be naked with other people, but street clothes aren’t always the best for scenes, so she and Rumlow settled on a pair of comfortable black shorts and a gray undershirt. No shoes or socks were allowed, and when she toed them off she shivered at the cold wooden floor underfoot. 

When she’s done she takes a moment to glance in the mirror, making a face at how her previously straightened hair had gone wavy when wet. She runs a hand through it, then finishes folding her clothes and goes back into the living room where Rumlow is. 

The rest of the night passes like any other. Rumlow stays in a nice mood, running his hands up and down her sides in a mixture of reverence and possession. For the first little while, he gets her riled up by having her do things for him, watching as she scrubs his kitchen floor, and uses her magic to put the dishes in the sink away. She scowls as she does it, and he laughs; in his apartment, she isn’t allowed to use her hands to do magic. Out with the avengers, she can throw busses and direct the fall of buildings, but with him, she has to focus to move around dishes. He finds it infinitely funny, and she really wishes she could hate him for it, but she can’t. 

After that, he tosses her over his shoulder, spinning them around while she yells at him and pounds ineffectually on his back. He smacks her ass, and she nearly kicks him in the head when he flips her back onto the ground, in front of his pull up bar. Then, he makes her do pull ups, and whenever she stops or he doesn’t like her form, he smacks her. The little smacks litter up and down her body, landing on her thighs, her hips, her sides, her shoulders. They certainly aren’t enough to bruise, but they’re enough to make the exercise harder, and by the end of it she’s dropped into her headspace hard. Her entire world is made up of her, and her burning muscles, and her sore knees, and him, and his calloused hands, and his sharp gaze. When she can’t do anymore pull-ups, she drops, and he half catches her and half shoves her, her back hitting the wall and his body pushing against her’s, boxing her in. He’s got a sharp look in his eyes, and for a moment his eyes lock on her lips. She’s in a deep enough headspace that she doesn’t care if he kisses her; they’ve kissed before, and it wasn’t even that bad. 

The moment lingers, and then right as she’s about to get impatient, he jerks forward, pressing a kiss to her cheek. It startles her enough to laugh, but then he wraps a hand around her neck and grabs a fistful of her hair, and then she’s not laughing anymore. 

The night ends back where it started, on the couch. Rumlow puts on one of his war movies, and she collapses on top of him, thoroughly worn out. She can hear his heart beating through his chest, feel his hand brushing through her hair, and there’s a part of her that never wants to leave. Why would she go, when here, she is safe, and happy, and calm?

At the night’s end, Rumlow leads her to the door. His grip is firm when he raises her wrist so they can both see the blue light, indicating that she is no longer at risk of a drop. Before she goes, she nuzzles her nose under his jaw, pressing a few soft kisses there. It’s one last act of submission, and it acts as a thank you when the words don’t come to her. He presses a kiss to her forehead, and then she’s off, their clasped hands slowly pulling apart. 

She has to get back to the compound before anyone notices her absence. She used to be more anxious about it, but this arrangement of theirs has been going on for six months, and not once has any of the Avengers confronted her for sneaking out at night. Thank God for small mercies.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was posted a little earlier than I originally planned because I wanted to give you guys a better understanding of the world building and where this story's going! Enjoy :D

She's been in the common for less than a minute when Steve calls her over. "Wanda, come here." 

"I'm making cereal," she grumbles, ignoring him. She can feel her powers reaching out, wanting to pick something up and throw it, but she holds them back. 

Steve actually snaps his fingers. "Wanda, now." 

She huffs, but sets the half prepared bowl on the counter and sullenly marches over. He takes her wrist without preamble, shoving the sleeve of her oversized shirt up her arm so he can see the monitor. "I don't get why you wear such baggy clothes, they cover the monitor up." 

"The monitor's ugly, I cover it up on purpose." 

Steve tsked, but didn't say anything more on the subject. He took note of the turquoise colored light, and jotted down the small number beside it. "I have to be honest, your self-control impresses me. You could write a book." 

"The Powers Of Meditation And Positive Thinking," Clint says from the other couch, gesturing grandly with his drum sticks. 

"I think someone's already written that," Wanda argues, and lets out a puff of air when Steve pulls her onto the couch to sit next to him. He gets like this sometimes, where he feels like a useless dom and tries to reestablish some form of superiority, as if to prove that Wanda's control over her submission is a result of his constant care, and not of her daily yoga sessions and meditation. Though, obviously, her control over her submission is more due to the fact that every couple of days she goes over to Rumlow's house and lets him drop her, but the lie has held up so far. 

Steve puts a claiming hand on her thigh, and turns to continue his conversation with Clint. Wanda knows better than to put up a fuss, so she just turns halfway and raises her hands to remotely finish pouring the cereal and call the bowl over to her. Steve notices it after the first bite, but he doesn't object, just splays his hand out further, claiming as much of her skin as he can.

Steve and Clint’s conversation comes to a quick halt when Pietro makes an appearance, sprinting into the room in a blur of motion and landing straddling Clint’s lap with so much force the chair rocked backwards. Clint grins up at him, grabbing his hips happily and kissing him back. 

Wanda continues eating her cereal, ignoring the judgement radiating off of Steve. Clint had been nominated Pietro’s legal Dom at the same time as Steve was nominated hers, but it worked out much better for the former two. At some point, an actual romance blossomed, leading to them throwing away all sense of public decency and take any chance possible to make out in a public space. 

The lovebirds pull away, both smiling at each other with matching deviant glints in their eyes, and Steve clears his throat. “Wow. Just look at you two.”

Pietro leans back enough to give Steve a sharp look, eyes travelling from his shirt, which had the top two buttons undone, to his hand on Wanda’s thigh. Wanda raises an eyebrow at him, daring him to comment. 

“Look at you two,” Pietro says, the words laced with irony. 

“Hey, every pairing is different,” Clint defends, as if Pietro’s insult was shaming their lack of chemistry, instead of shaming Steve’s possessiveness. 

Steve nods, begrudging, and his hand squeezes Wanda’s thigh a little. “True, true. Still, I wouldn’t mind… a little bit more. I’m feeling a bit like a useless Dom, over here.”

He gives Wanda a meaningful look, and she pointedly takes another bite of cereal to keep from saying anything she might regret. 

“But obviously, that’s not going to happen,” Pietro intones, defensive. “Because Wanda’s ace.”

The room is quiet for a moment, before Steve nods jerkily. “Of course. Of course.” 

“You do everything I could ever ask for,” Wanda says, because she does actually have to play nice. 

“Yeah, yeah, I guess.” Steve takes Wanda’s wrist, squeezing it tightly and holding it steady so she can’t bring her next spoonful of cereal to her mouth. “I just… I wouldn’t mind if you asked for a little bit more.”

Wanda waits until he releases his grip, and then another three-count after that, forcing her powers to relax. She can make excuses when her powers went a little jumpy when her light was yellow or orange, but turquoise? She has to be in control of them then, otherwise it meant she was  _ never  _ in control of them. 

“You’re so… giving,” She says finally, unsure of what other compliment to give to make him drop the subject. 

The other avengers come in then, which blessedly allows the subject to be dropped for the moment. Natasha goes straight to the kitchen to pour herself some tea, but Tony makes a detour to the couch first, checking in with everyone and trying to get a glimpse of Wanda’s wrist monitor. Her sleeves are already covering it, but she pulls them down even more, gaze steady on Tony. He complains and goes to reach for her, but Steve snaps “Knock it off Tony, it’s none of your business.”

“The monitor is my design, which means it’s entirely my business,” he complains, though he doesn’t try again. 

Bruce is also present, as is Thor. All of the older Avengers are Doms, though aside from Steve and Clint, Natasha is currently the only one in a partnership with a sub. Her Sub lives off-site, and though Wanda has only seen him a few times she knows he’s a natural-born twink, has short brown hair, and is named “Jamie”. 

Thor, Bruce, and Tony are all without partners, though for Doms that isn’t a big issue. Doms don’t experience the need to drop, and so instead they’re able to take out their natural protective energies in their jobs or hobbies. On the other hand, all subs are required to have a legal Dom, despite the fact that many have low-level submission that allows them to drop much less often, and in less severe ways. If the Sub is under 18, their legal Dom will be a family member, who will be in charge of protecting them and offering comfort when needed. After 18, the Sub is usually transferred to a different Dom outside of the family, so their sexual needs can be attended to as well. Subs in America have a lot of input into this process, and can say who they do and don’t want to sub for, but at the end of the day, they still need to sub for someone. 

The common area becomes a haven of commotion for the next few minutes as everyone moves around, getting food and catching up. Wanda’s already finished her cereal and wants some water to wash it down, but she isn’t moving from her spot, and she definitely isn’t going to use her magic when there are so many people in her way, so she makes herself wait. Thor ends up sitting on the other end of the small couch they’re on, and Steve pulls Wanda a little closer to him to give Thor room. During the commotion, Pietro gets up to get something from the kitchen, and Steve slaps his ass as he passes. 

After breakfast, they all head over to the training building, where they all go to their own separate corners. Wanda has a regime of cardio, light calisthenics, fight training, and then powers training, but first she stretches, taking her time. She doesn’t do yoga as much as she claims to to keep up her ruse, so any extra time spent stretching or meditating helps. 

They all have lunch in their own separate corners of the world, and then reconvene to go over mission briefings and threat analyses. Wanda’s just started to zone out when she hears a name that brings her attention back to the forefront. 

“—Rumlow requested we give him more important duties. He says that he’s an ‘underused asset’ and should be treated with the same caliber as the non-enhanced Avengers.”

Steve snorts, shaking his head. “Of course he’d say that. He’s the most arrogant prick I’ve ever met.”

Bruce frowns, creating a crease in between his eyebrows. “Should we re-evaluate him? There’s nothing wrong with having more people on the team—”

“He’s already an axillary, to be put to use for big events,” Steve insists. “That’s plenty. If he’s bored, he should get a hobby.”

Clint leans back, a smirk on his face. “What type of hobby do you suggest? I can’t really see the guy gardening.”

“I can,” Nastaha teases. 

Wanda finds herself talking without really meaning to. “Do we have a position available for him? Maybe something lower level, nothing big but enough to appease him.” 

She knows that they won’t be honoring his request to make him on the same level as them, but she also knows that Rumlow understands the game. When submitting his request, he didn’t actually think he’d be made into an Avenger; he was overshooting, asking for too much so the Avengers would give him as much as they reasonably could. It’s a good strategy, and she may as well do her part in helping him out. 

Tony hums, nodding and shuffling through some paperwork. “We have more roles on the compound to be filled. Jobs that require a higher level of skill than the average agent, maybe we can talk to him about one of those?”

Steve huffs. When he crosses his arms and slouches back in his chair, it does nothing to make him look smaller, and everything to make him look stupidly peeved, like a teenager being scolded by their parents. “This is ridiculous. He should be glad he has a job at all, instead of spending out the rest of his days on The Raft. He isn’t in a place to be making demands.”

“He did agree to the plea bargain,” Bruce reminds him, “And he did fully cooperate in the operation to bring down Hydra. If it weren’t for his intel—”

“You’d still be gallivanting across the country, blowing up warehouses at random because they smelled like squid,” Tony finishes. “Besides, he is a pretty skilled agent. I’d much rather have him on our side than out in the wind, looking for revenge.”

_ Me too,  _ Wanda thinks. She imagines a life without Rumlow, and cringes. He’s the only thing that’s kept her pushing away Steve’s advances for this long; if not for him, she’d probably be just like her brother, doting and eager to please. Except unlike Pietro, who thrives under his dom’s influence, she’d be miserable. 

“I say we throw him a bone,” Tony continues. “We give him a small promotion, make sure he’s kept busy enough that he can’t spend all his nights plotting to destroy us.”

Steve scoffs. “I’m sure that’s what he already does.”

_ Nope,  _ Wanda thinks.  _ Actually, he spends a lot of his nights with me. And we’re busy with other things besides plotting. _

__ She imagines, for a moment, what it’d be like for Rumlow to be a full Avenger. She imagines Steve giving custody of her over to him, being allowed to be with him without the antics, the hiding, the midnight trips. She imagines Rumlow on the stair Clint had been that morning, legs open and inviting, with her own body balanced carefully over him, straddling him. She hates Steve’s hands on her hips, but loves Rumlow’s. It’s such a perfect fantasy that it makes her ache, but she knows it’s just a fantasy. She doesn’t know if Rumlow is actually good enough to make the team, and even if he was, Steve wouldn’t allow it, still too upset at Rumlow’s betrayal so many years ago. He doesn’t care that Rumlow defected in the end, and faught with the good guys during the fall of the Triskilian. The fact that he  _ ever  _ was a member of Hydra, that he ever worked side by side on a team with Steve when he really was working against him, was too much. 

The truth is, Steve hates Rumlow, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Which is obnoxious because Wanda likes Rumlow quite a lot, and she believes she could handle all of the other obstacles in the way of them forming a real partnership, except for the obstacle that is Steve Rogers. When he plants his feet, he plants them in cement, and there is no moving him. It’s easier just to wait until he dies, but for all she knows, Steve’s immortal. Much as she hates to admit it, she’s likely to die as his sub, and there’s nothing she can do about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you thought! Also, please let me know which dynamics you’re interested in— for example, there are certain characters and situations I’m not planning on actually paying that much attention to (like ClintxPietro) but if that’s something you actually really want to see, let me know and I’ll make it happen! 
> 
> Have a wonderful day 😊


	3. Chapter 3

Wanda brings Rumlow a bottle of champagne in celebration. She knows that Tony told him of the promotion earlier in the day, so she won’t be spoiling anything. 

The job is to work as an “Avenger’s Liaison”, whatever that means. It’s probably code for ‘do our paperwork’, but either way, it’s a step up. Wanda knows Rumlow gets stir crazy, and anything extra he can do he’ll be thankful for.

The door is unlocked, so she lets herself inside. One moment she’s on her feet, the next she’s being slammed up against the wall, the bottle of champagne clanging against it but not breaking. 

“Hey, sweetheart,” Rumlow grins wolfishly. With the way his hands are situated under her ass, it’s actually more comfortable for her to wrap her legs around his waist, grounding herself in something besides just the sturdy wall and his sturdy arms. “What’s a girl like you doing at a place like this?”

“Celebrating?” Wanda says coyly, holding up the bottle of champagne. “Congrats on the promotion.”

Rumlow’s in a celebratory mood, but of course that means something different for him. He makes Wanda go and get changed, and then has her kneel by the wall, balancing the champagne bottle on her forehead. It’s an exercise that’s supposed to make her still, allowing her thoughts to slow down and her breathing to relax, but she can hear him walking around the room preparing things, and it riled her up. The bottle starts to wobble, and before it can fall she twitches her hand, and the bottle is engulfed in red light. She manages to use her powers to steady it, but not without him seeing. 

“Oh look at you, naughty naughty girl. You think you can get away with cheating, huh? I guess I’ll have to fix that.”

He takes the bottle away, and makes her turn so he can bind her hands behind her, using purple rope that he wraps all the way down to her fingers. She can feel her potential for power being locked away, tied up with a bow just like her hands, but it doesn’t make her panic. It feels grounding, like she’s a ship that’s finally been anchored. 

He comes around to her front, brushing her light brown hair behind her ear. He steps away for a moment, and comes back with a few supplies. “Hold this,” he commands, gently cramming a pencil between her teeth until she bites down. Then he comes around to her defenseless back, and starts brushing out then braiding her hair. With the pencil in between his teeth, she can’t speak, and with her arms behind her, she can’t move much, and it’s then that she feels herself start to sink into submission. He starts telling her about her day, and she has no expectations except to listen. It’s nice, and she feels herself close her eyes in appreciation every time his fingers brush against her back. 

When he’s done, he ties the braid off and stands again, coming back to her front. He grabs the edge of the pencil and pulls it a little, making her head tilt to one side then the other, before he snaps his fingers and she drops the pencil into his hand. He touches her face then, just feeling it, and with ever brush of his fingers or push of his palm, she feels claimed, owned. 

She is not ashamed. She has no shame over her submission, when it’s given freely. And, when in this headspace, it’s hard not to give everything over to him. 

Her anxiety ramps up a little when he pulls her mouth open, and she knows instinctively what the ‘O’ of her mouth looks like. He is right in front of her, crotch level with her face, and she doesn’t even have the use of her hands to defend her. So, she swallows her pride, and says “Yellow.”

Immediately, he sinks to his knees in front of her, so they’re eye level. When he was standing, she was in a good position to give him a blowjob, and now, with him kneeling, she’s in a good position to kiss him. She has absolutely no urge to, but she likes the closeness, the intimacy of being face to face, hardly a foot apart. 

“This better?” he questions, and she nods, smiling to show that she’s ready to continue. He’s done feeling her face, but he’s not done touching her, and his hands wander, pulling her braid over her shoulder, adjusting her bra-straps under her tank top. They have a habit of slipping out from under the thin sleeves, and Wanda’s been wondering for a while if she should start going bra-less to these sessions, but she doesn’t know how he’ll react. She trusts him— she does— but there is a lingering fear that if she gives too much of herself away, allows herself to be too bare to his eyes, he‘ll forget himself and insist on having sex. 

She isn’t afraid of him forcing her, but she is afraid of him suggesting it. Right now, she believes they have a deeper understanding of each other, and if she did something to make him request sex, it would shatter that understanding. 

He must sense her tension, because he snaps his fingers, drawing her attention back to him. “Stay with me,” he commands, and immediately she puts all of her energy into following the order, living in the present moment. He ran his hands down her sides, gripping the insides of her thighs to pull them further apart. He rubbed the outside of her thighs, his hands so large they could curve around them, possessive. His hands pushed up her sides, causing her shirt to bunch up slightly, and he rubbed his thumbs into the side of her breasts, massaging the muscle there. She was always hesitant about people touching her chest or butt, but she liked it a lot when it was non-sexual. It was a part of her body that didn’t get much attention, like her scalp or neck, and it felt nice to be touched there, on the places where it was just skin and muscle. 

“You having fun?” She teases quietly, after he’s been touching her for a few minutes. It’s just them in the world, and she’s long lost her sense of time. It could have been minutes or hours, and she didn’t care either way. 

He hums, giving her a dirty smile before knee-climbing on her lap, his calves pressing into her thighs. She can’t help but laugh, falling backwards a little when he loses his balance and presses against her. He catches her head before it could hit the wall, and then helps right her. 

After that, he unbinds her hands, rubbing the skin as he helps her to his feet. While she was balancing the champagne bottle, he’d gotten together a plate of food on the coffee table, clearly knowing what he wanted. Now he pops the cap from the champagne and pours two glasses, backing Wanda up against the wall and goading her into letting him feed it to her. That involves her tucking her hands behind her, and him keeping her pressed against the wall with his hips. She opens her mouth just enough for him to tip the drink in, him deciding how much she gets. The champagne is bubbly on her tongue and his hips are warm against hers.

He has very specific plans for what happens next, which includes him laying on the couch and her straddling his hips, feeding him food from the tray on the coffee table. He's set out grapes, pieces of cheese, and cubes of chicken. "Is this your dinner?" she teases, already straddling his lap.

"My second dinner," he says, gesturing to his body cockily. "It takes a lot of work to maintain this, you know. A lot of protein." 

_ "Protein,"  _ she mocks, resulting in a sharp slap to her thigh. Rumlow looks at the resulting redness with intrigue, and then orders "We're switching spots, get on your back." 

Wanda follows the orders, not knowing why but more than willing. It results with her on her back on the couch, Rumlow looming over her. He slaps the side of her thigh again, making her let out an undignified noise.

He pins her hands above her head with one hand, closing his other hand around her throat and leaning in close. "I want to do something, and I need you to tell me if it's within your limits. Shirt off, stomach down. I can look away if you want." 

Wanda's head is a little up in the clouds, but she manages to mumble an "Okay." He gives her throat a quick, tight squeeze, making her gasp, then gets off. Like he said he turns away-- not completely necessary, but she appreciates it anyways-- as she takes her tank top off, leaving her in her bra and high waisted shorts. She lays back on the couch, face down this time, and tells him she's good, and he spends the next half hour destroying her back. He scratches it, hits it, sucks marks into her skin, and it hurts  _ so much _ and just enough. Eventually, when she gets too squirrely he's forced to bind her hands again, and sit next to her head on the coach, pinning them down as he wields his switch. Wanda hates the switch, but she loves being switched; it's like, the particular pain of it is awful, but she likes feeling like a canvas for Rumlow, likes laying down and letting him wreck her. 

Rumlow is, inherently, a violent man. He's also sweet, and affectionate, and creative, but along with all of those attributes, he's violent and sadistic and dangerous. Wanda can do a lot of damage with her powers, but without them, she's at the world's mercy. Rumlow is the exact opposite; despite not having enhancements, he is powerful, capable of feats of great strength and stamina. He wields the switch like a whip, slashing it across Wanda's back again and again, making her yell out in pain, voice cracking. And then he pauses, but only to gloat; getting a handful of her hair and pushing her face into the couch cushions, her wrists still trapped, unyielding, in the painful grip of his hand. 

"Look at you," Rumlow mocks, hand still painful in her hair. "You should see yourself, all streaked up. We should move somewhere else if we keep doing this, otherwise you're gonna get blood on my couch. We can't have that, now can we?"

He lets go of her hair to squeeze the back of her thigh cruelly, harsh enough to leave finger-bruises in her flesh for days to come. Wanda is enhanced, but only with powers, not with any healing magic; she gets hurt like any normal person, and one of Rumlow's specialties is hurting normal people. He beats her and degrades her down to being human, making her more than her powers, more than her title. In his unflinching grasp, she is whatever he wants her to be, nothing more than clay for him to mold. It's the most liberating thing she's ever felt; she doesn't have to do anything, doesn't have to decide anything, doesn't have to pretend to be anything she's not. He's reduced her to a sniveling sub, and they'll stop when he decides to. 

He hits her again, and she shrieks. The switch stings like hell, cutting a line into her tender skin. She hates it; she's miserable. She never wants him to stop. He's still sitting on the couch right next to her and she can feel his warmth, can feel every twitch of his ridiculously strong hand as he holds her down, muffles her wails in the couch. She's a crier, always has been, and he soaks it up. For all she feeds off of his controlling nature, he feeds off of controlling her. It's a perfect match; yin and yang. 

He drops the switch and pulls her up by her wrists, forcing her back to arch painfully. She sobs. He’s about to say something, probably goading and cruel based on the curve of his mouth, and she’ll probably end up begging in response, when there’s a knock on the door. 

His mouth curls in an annoyed frown at the inconvenience, and already Wanda feels her mind clear a little. The knock is a reminder that the outside world exists, and when they’re this deep into a scene, it’s not a pleasant reminder. 

“You, stay here,” Rumlow orders, standing and lowering her back fully onto the couch, making sure her mouth isn’t covered by the couch. “I’ll handle this, and I expect you to stay quiet. If you make a noise, I’m gonna have to punish you, understand?”

Wanda nods, unable to say any meaningless words. Rumlow nods, smacks her on the thigh again, and goes to get the door. 

“Hello?”

“I need to talk to Wanda.”

It’s Pietro’s voice, and Wanda both panics and cringes. She doesn’t know what would lead him to come all the way here to find her, but whatever it is, she knows it can’t be good. The panic is from the thought of him seeing her like this, beaten and marked, with her hands tied and her face tear-streaked. If he comes inside, she’s going to have a panic attack.

There’s a shuffle, and the door creaks as Rumlow forces it to stay partially closed. “Hey, cut that out, you can’t come in here. What do you need her for?”

“None of your goddamn business,” Pietro snaps, because yeah, when he’s not around Doms he’s trying to impress he’s really freaking mean. “Wanda? Wanda!”

“Hey, stop it! I already told you, you can’t come in here. I can get her for you, but I need you to wait at least fifteen minutes, alright? She needs to get ready.”

“If she wants to keep sneaking around with you behind her  _ real  _ dom’s back, then she better be ready now! They’re looking for her, we have to get back to the compound  _ now _ .”

Wanda squeezes her eyes shut.  _ Shit. _

__ Rumlow verbalizes her feelings. “Motherfucker. Fine, give me two minutes. She needs at least that, alright? She’s gotta get dressed.”

“Yeah right, like she’d be naked with you, asshole. Two minutes, hurry up.”

The door closes, and audibly locks. Then Rumlow is at the couch, his game face on. “You heard that?”

“Yeah,” Wanda says, trying to get her own game face on. It’s notably harder; she’d been completely in her headspace, and to be ripped from it so brutally was agonizing. “Yeah, I’m— fine. I’m fine. Untie me?”

“I’ve got you,” he promises, and cuts the ropes with the scissors he always keeps close by when using rope. She rubs her wrists, and he brings her normal clothes to her before turning around, tapping his foot impatiently.

“What a mess,” she grumbles, trying to get her shirt on. She feels like she can’t use her arms, and her back stings miserably. Normally, Rumlow would apply a soothing salve to it afterwards, so it would ache for the next few days but not sting, but today they don’t have the time. She’ll have to just deal with it. 

After she’s dressed, she goes to the bathroom to collect herself, splaying her face with cold water. It isn’t as much of a wake up call as hearing her brother’s voice in the middle of a scene, but it helps. 

When she comes out of the bathroom, she moves towards the door, but Rumlow intercepts her, catching her in a huge that’s more unyielding-gorilla than soft display of affection. She melts into his touch automatically. Normally, they would cuddle after a scene, allowing their heart rates and hormones to get back on track, but not tonight. Tonight, all they have os a thirty second hug. 

“I don’t want you to drop,” Rumlow says, his voice still firm and commanding, but quieter than normal in a scene. All of the arrogance from before is gone. “If you think you’re going to drop, I don’t care where you are, text me. I’ll find you, and we’ll take care of it. I don’t want you to drop, got it?”

Wanda pressed her head against his chest, trying desperately to retain a single drop of his calm in her ocean of panic. “Okay.”

“Good, good. What do you say?”

Wanda bites her lip, trying to delay it, but she can’t for long. “Yes, sir.”

“Good girl,” he praises, kissing her on the forehead. “Okay, our time is up. You’ve got this.” 

——————————-

She and Pietro are running as soon as she enters the hallway, though obviously this doesn’t really count as ‘running’ to him. She gets to her bike, and looks at him, begging for some sort of explanation.

“Mission,” he says, eyes darkening. “It’s confidential, so I couldn’t tell him. I don’t know the details, I just know that everyone else is suiting up.”

“I fucking hate my life,” she grumbles, and starts pedaling. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right now I'm still posting pre-written chapters, but soon I'll get up to the point that I've written to, which I think will be good. I think what I've learned lately is that I secretly hate posting schedules and just want to post chapters immediately after I write them 🙈
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the fic! Please comment if so. The potential audience for this fic is tiny, so every comment counts!


	4. Chapter 4

_ “Mission,” he says, eyes darkening. “It’s confidential, so I couldn’t tell him. I don’t know the details, I just know that everyone else is suiting up.” _

_ “I fucking hate my life,” she grumbles, and starts pedaling.  _

Rumlow’s apartment is purposefully close to the Avenger’s Compound, so it isn’t a bad ride, but it still feels like it takes too long. With every minute that passes, she knows it’s another minute that she’s unaccounted for, another minute for Steve’s suspicion to grow. 

She finally gets to the Compound, ditching her bike by the housing complex and using her powers to rocket herself up to the third floor, where her apartment window is open. She rolls inside and quickly changed shoes, throwing on her red leather jacket before jumping out the window again, using her powers to slow her descent. She’s lucky; her costume is simple, without all of the dramatic bells and whistles of some of the other hero costumes. There are some situations where it’s better for her to look like a normal person, where she can blend in with a crowd and use her powers in relative secret. 

Her costume is very, very different from Steve’s. When she gets to the launch room, he is just stepping out, fully decked out in his navy tac suit. The uniform is practically plastered to his skin, made out of thick Kevlar and who knows what else. It also takes him multiple minutes to get on and off, and acts as a real pain whenever he goes to the bathroom. At least, she assumes. 

It serves its purpose though. As soon as she seems him, she gulps. His shoulders are inhumanly broad, his waist tapered smoothly, arms thick with muscles. He’s inhuman, and he’s looking for her. 

“Wanda!” He proclaims, exasperated. “Where the fuck were you?”

“Sunset yoga?” She says, it coming out more like a question than she intended. Ah shit, she’s definitely dropping. 

He huffs in annoyance, but doesn’t linger on it. “Fine. Are you all ready? Do you have your gear?”

“Yes sir,” she says, then bites her lip. She didn’t mean to say  _ that _ either, it just came out. It’s an instinctual urge to address a powerful Dom with respect, and when Steve is in uniform, it’s an urge she struggles suppressing on the best of days. 

“Good, then get in the quinjet. And no more drama from you, alright? Don’t let your powers get out of control.”

She grunts out something in agreement, then jogs to the quinjet. Within sixty seconds, all of the Avengers are onboard, and in less than ten minutes they’re at their destination. Someone has let an entire zoos worth of mutated animals loose in Manhattan, and the Avengers have been called to deal with it, since the UN Security Council wants the situation contained without killing any of the specimen. It’s suspicious as hell, but Wanda can’t deign herself to care about shady government business right now. 

She goes where directed, does what she’d told. Her powers are, thankfully, well-made for a circumstance like this one, and so she’s actually able to be useful. It takes a couple of hours, but finally all of the animals are rounded up. Wanda walks back to the quinjet, buckled herself in, and waits. 

Clint is the first one to get back. He’s high off of success, after having used a variety of trick arrows and laser lights to corral the mutated lions, but as soon as he sees her his smile drops. “Woah, Wanda, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she says quickly, her anxiety rising. What must she look like that even Clint pegged her true feelings after only a glance?

Thor and Tony come in next, and Thor dotes over her while Tony insists to see her light. She snaps at him, and he backs off, sharing a pointed look with Clint. Pietro is next, and he looks at her for a fraction of a second before announcing “Well, shit,” and flopping down in Clint’s lap. 

Natasha and Bruce are already at the front of the jet, preparing to pilot them home, which means there’s only one more Avenger to go.

Steve marches into the quinjet, boots thumping against the metal floor with every step. His uniform is slightly torn, and he’s soaking wet from when he fought the mutated alligators, but other than that, he’s unscathed. He pats Tony on the shoulder, congratulates Clint for his good work, and then his eyes land on Wanda. 

“Show me your light,” he says, stopping a few feet away. Wanda scowls at him, and pulls her jacket sleeve down more to cover the monitor.

Steve’s expression goes dark. He doesn’t ask again, just grabs her by the collar of her jacket and yanks her to her feet, slamming her against the wall. He yanks her sleeve up right as she summons a ball of glowing red energy around her free hand, ready to fight. 

His temper mellows a little after seeing the light, and he leans his weight into his arm pinning her against the wall, less aggressive this time and more precautionary. “Wanda, your light is orange. Stop using your powers, you don’t have any control of them like this. We’re going back to the Compound, and I’m going to take you back to my apartment to drop you. I just need you to relax and trust me.”

The energy ball glows brighter for a moment, before Wanda forcibly quenches it. Steve was right in saying that she doesn’t have control over her powers like this. She’s too emotional and volatile. She hardly has control over her powers on a good day. 

Maybe she should just let Steve drop her. 

She doesn’t say anything, but allows herself to be sat down on the bench next to Steve, his hand low around her waist. She loses time, and when her world comes back into focus they’re just about at Steve’s apartment. 

“I don’t want you to drop me,” she says. 

Steve ignores her, unlocking his door and herding her inside. “Your hormones are out of balance, and if you go much longer than this you’re going to go into a bad drop. I’m just trying to prevent this.”

“Steve—” she starts, and in one smooth motion he turns around, his hand locking around her throat. She freezes, stuck in spot looking up at him. 

At her sides, her hands twitch. 

“Wanda,” he says, all cool calm and easy acceptance. He’s accepted the situation, is happy with it, even, and wants her to feel the same way. “Look at me in the eyes. I’m going to drop you, and you’re going to feel better, alright?”

“ _ No— _ ” she says, and he steps forwards. He’s much taller than her, and his shoulders are so broad he feels like he’s practically twice her size. He could toss her around like a puppet, do whatever he wants, but so far he’s only intimidating her, trying to force a drop, and as he growls, says her name, she just— can’t. 

She raises one hand— one hand is all it takes— and calls her magic, swiveling her wrists as she directs the invisible energy into his brain. He freezes, eyes glowing from the light traveling within him, and it’s almost easy work to find the connections and  _ twist.  _ They’re mental connections, not physical ones, but they work just as well. It’s as easy as one twist for his eyes to shudder, and his body to collapse to the ground. 

Wanda pants, looking at his body on the smooth wooden floor. Maybe she should’ve waited until he brought her into the living room, where there’s a soft-looking rug, but he was already pushing her so much. 

She looks down at her hands, which are trembling.  _ Fuck.  _ Maybe ‘easy’ wasn’t the right word for what she just did. It was simple, but strenuous, especially after already using her powers so much in the earlier fight, and she feels a little like she could collapse. 

The door opens, but Wanda doesn’t even have time to look before a bust a wind rushes through her hair, and Pietro is standing beside her. “Oh,” he says, panting a little. “Good. I thought that was you.”

“Yeah,” Wanda agrees, hardly hearing him. They both look down at Steve’s body on the floor. His butt is sticking up a little, and it’d be funny if she wasn’t so horrified. 

“Is he dead?” Pietro asks, not sounding like he has a strong opinion one way or the other. 

Wanda shakes her head. “No. Just asleep.”

“Ah.”

Wanda wants to use her powers to carry Steve into his bedroom, but she's already used them a lot for one day, and dropping Steve's 200-pound body to get bruised up doesn't sound like a good way to avoid detection. In the end, Pietro gives her a hand, and they carry Steve by his limbs down the hallway to his room. It'd be easier if Steve's apartment was as small as Wanda's, but Steve has a full sized entrance, kitchen, living room, and hallway, with a master bedroom, guestroom, and two bathrooms, respectively. They dump Steve's body on the bed, and Wanda starts the nearly 30-minute process of getting Steve out of his uniform. The goal is to have Steve wake up tomorrow morning thinking that he successfully dommed Wanda, and went to bed afterwards. While Wanda doesn't know what Steve usually wears to bed, she knows it's not a dirty uniform.

Once she's stripped him down, she and Pietro stand over him, looking at his body. Pietro lets out a low whistle. "Damn. Sometimes I forget how fucking hot he is. Don't you think he's sexy?"

"I guess," Wanda says, dismissive. Objectively, she knows Steve is genetically enhanced to be gorgeous, but she's not a good judge of what qualifies as 'sexy'. He's aesthetically pleasing, yes. But she doesn't 'want' him like other people do. 

She takes a step back, letting herself sit down for a moment. She closes her eyes and reaches out with her mind, finding that Steve is still very much alive, and still very much asleep. Good.

As she's sitting, she catches a glimpse of her light, which is still orange, no better than it had been on the quinjet. She feels like her skin is crawling, and all she wants to do is shower, but she doesn't think it'll actually help. It's an agonizing way to live, and she knows, at the back of her mind, that she deserves better. 

Rumlow's instructions come back to her, so powerful she can hardly do anything to stop them. It's a good thing she put Steve down early; if he'd started giving her commands, they would've been near impossible to ignore. Her body craves the easy glide of submission, even if her mind refuses to be pushed there by someone who doesn't know her boundaries. 

She looks over to Pietro, hoping she doesn't look too pathetic. He's concerned, but doing a good job of hiding it. She asks him to retrieve her phone from where she left it on her nightstand, and a moment later he's back, handing her her phone with the headphones still attached from when she'd been listening to music earlier. 

"I'm going to call him," she says, hoping Pietro gets the memo. She has no shame in her submission, but it is not something she ever wants him to be present for. "Thanks for being here."

He puts a hand on her shoulder, reassuring, then speeds off. Wanda clicks on Rumlow's contact, and hurriedly stuffs the headphones into her ears so she can hear when he picks up. 

"What's your location?" He says without greeting.

"You're not coming over," Wanda says, the words coming out stronger than she feels capable of. "I'm in… a situation. I'm handling it. I just-- you said to call if I was dropping, and I forgot that you said you'd come over--"

"Hey, hey, it's fine," he soothes. "What's your color?" 

She looks at her monitor again, shame filling her stomach. "Orange." 

He clucks gently. "You're really getting there, huh. How have your powers been? Have they been at all sporadic?"

"There's not enough of them left to be sporadic," she mocks, self-deprecating. "They're practically exhausted."

"Hey, that's alright baby. Now listen up, this is what's going to happen. You're going to tell me the situation, and then we're going to handle it. I want you to give this over to me, alright?"

"Alright," Wanda practically whispers. She backs up, sliding down the wall, and tells Rumlow everything. As the words come pouring out, she finds herself relaxing, her breaths evening. She can feel the weight of the day falling off her shoulders as she gives it all over to him. 

He hums afterward, saying "Good girl,” and she feels her cheeks warm from the praise. “Where’s Steve now?”

“Still on my bed,” Wanda says, then cringes. “Still mostly naked.”

Rumlow lets out a quiet inhale on the other line. “Go handle it. Get him dressed in his sleep clothes, like you said. Can you check to see if he’s waking up?”

Wanda stands, retrieving the clothes from the dresser after a few false attempts. She shoves her phone in her back pocket so her hands are free, still able to hear Rumlow through the headphones. “Yeah, I can feel it. He’s still sleeping.”

Silence for a moment, and then: “Have you ever done this to someone before?”

Wanda grimaced. “No. With the team, I only ever use my telekinesis. Before them, I mostly just used my telepathy to discover people’s greatest fears and exploit them, giving them… daydreams, I guess. Hallucinations that I controlled.” She wiggles the pair of sweatpants up Steve’s legs, trying not to focus too hard on either her task or her words. “But I understand how the power works. I always knew there was a lot of potential that was… untapped. I just didn’t want to use it.”

Over the phone, she can head Rumlow hum, and some rustling noises as he moves around. She wonders what he’s doing, if he’s in the kitchen making a snack, or on the couch, playing with one of the throw pillows. She forces herself to refocus on her task, so the intense longing that comes from being away from him— and being so close to a drop— is evaded. 

“The whole… worst fear thing...” Rumlow says softly. “Did you ever… do that with me?”

She purses her lips, scowling as she yanks the sweats over Steve’s stiff hips. “You mean, did I ever go inside your head? No, I told you, I don’t do that anymore. I wouldn’t do it to you.”

“Why not?”

She pauses, wondering what type of question that was. “What, you want me to go through your head? Sift through all your worst memories, the things that keep you up at night?”

He lets out a soft breath. “Well, no. But if I had your powers… I don’t know, I’d use them. I don’t understand why you don’t.”

Wanda airs Steve’s T-shirt out, getting ready for the more difficult task of getting the shirt over his torso. “I don’t because it’s evil. My powers hurt people.”

“But they don’t have to. You shouldn’t push this part of yourself aside, you should use it. Your power is a weapon, and a weapon by itself can’t be evil. It’s all about the person who wields it, and sweetheart, you’re not evil.” 

Wanda sits down on the bed hard, covering her face with her hands. “You don’t know that.”

“Questioning your Dom’s authority? Tsk tsk, I should spank you for that.”

Wanda huffs out a laugh. “Mm, maybe. And technically, you’re not my Dom.”

“Aw, that’s real rich. You think a Dom and a Sub are just the people’s whose names are on that little form they had you sign? A marriage ain’t just a piece of paper, and a partnership ain’t it either.”

“I know,” Wanda murmurs, because she does. She knows, with every fiber of her being, that Rumlow is her Dom in all the ways that it matters. 

She finishes dressing Steve, and huffs, dropping his torso and letting him flop back on the bed. He groaned, beginning to stir, and she held her hand out, feeling the parts of his mind that were trying to rouse and quenching them.

“What was that?” Rumlow says in her ear. “Is he waking up?”

“Not anymore.” Wanda closes her eyes, still holding her hand out though there was no longer any magic running through it. “I’m exhausted. I feel like I could just… collapse.”

“Get to a couch first,” Rumlow says, then darker: “I don’t want you in his bed.”

“Oh, possessive, are we?” Wanda teases, already walking to the living room. 

On the other line, Rumlow growls. “You know it, baby. Sleep tonight, and continue with your plan. Tomorrow, see if you can get to my place. I want my hands on you in less than 24 hours, understand?”

Wanda shivers, instinctively hiding her smile. She secretly loves when he’s possessive, even though she tries not to show it. “Yes sir.”

  
  


——————————

  
  


She sleeps on the couch, and in the morning is woken up by Steve sleepily stumbling his way out of the bedroom. His hair was messier than it had a right to be, and he breathed into his hand, making a face at the smell. Morning breath, probably, made worse by the fact that he didn't brush his teeth the night before. 

Then his eyes land on her, and he stops walking, shoulders squaring. "Hi."

"Hey," she greets, trying to be submissive and casual all at once. 

He stares at her for a few long seconds, then comes over, sitting on the couch's armrest. "Color?"

Wanda flashed him her wrist monitor, which was a healthy yellowish-green. 

He grunts. "Good. I'm glad." He stares at Wanda for a few moments longer, and she waits to see if he calls her bluff since, after all, he didn't actually do anything to her last night-- but waking up in his pajamas, with her in his apartment, lead him to believe that he did. Now, she's banking on the hope that he suspects his own forgetfulness over foul play. 

He lifts an eyebrow, and for a second she thinks she's been made, but then he asks "Recite to me everything we did last night. I want to go over it with you."

She raises her eyebrows, not expecting this, but also not unprepared. "You used dominant gestures and body language to get me to submit, and then you had me kneel for you while you touched my hair. I was already so close to a drop that we didn't have to do much more than that. Then, we both went to bed." 

Steve grunts. "I should've had you sleep in my bed." 

"I asked not to," Wanda says, choosing her words carefully. "Which you respected, because you know I don't like a lot of physical affection."

The physical affection, like most of what she said, was a lie. Wanda  _ loves  _ physical affection-- she just doesn't want Steve's possessive touches. 

Steve grunts again, nodding. He ducks his head, then looks up at Wanda, eyes shadowed. There's something terrifyingly dominant about the motion, and Wanda is quickly reminded of how powerful Steve actually is, and how much he holds back on a daily basis. She does not want to make him her enemy.

Then he asks her a question she wasn't expecting.

"Was it good for you? I mean, was there anytime I pushed too far?"

Wanda just stares at him. Was he… checking in? 

She wants to say  _ yes, you pushed too far when you tried to dom me at all,  _ but that's not going to help her case at all. Instead she coughs, looking away. "Yes. You're… a good dom." 

Steve let out a relieved puff of air, then stood, leaning over to kiss her on the forehead. "You're a good sub. I know we're both still figuring out the dynamic between us, but there's always some learning that takes place in new partnerships. It'll get easier with time."

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s a fun fact: originally, instead of Wanda using her powers on Steve, I had Steve force her to submit (and then drop) in a very dubious way, which honestly, I wasn’t very comfortable with. While I think that could have been a path to choose, it was not actually what I wanted to do. In this fic, Wanda is not broken or weak, and she is not in her arrangement with Rumlow because she needs him to save her, but because she wants to be with him. I think right now, Wanda is in a situation that, while its not great, she has some say over, and she is currently choosing to be in that situation. Sometimes people are in crummy situations, not because they’re forced there by abuse, but just because it’s the option that makes the most sense at one time. Anyways, I hope that came across. Wanda genuinely knows the value of her consent, and knows that she isnt helpless, and while there are some things she doesn’t want to do, she is willing to do them if necessary. 
> 
> What’s a BAMF. Just saying 🤷♀️


	5. Chapter 5

Wanda goes back to her apartment to shower and change, and then spends the rest of the morning with Steve, at his request. They have breakfast together, then watch the news, both sitting on the small loveseat with Steve's hand smoothing up and down her thigh. She's not particularly fond of his touch, but she's willing to put up with it for the sake of her lie working. To reject him now, after supposedly letting him dom her last night, would only raise suspicion. 

Eventually, Steve packs them both water bottles and the head out to the training center for morning practice. They walk close on the path, arms sometimes brushing, though they aren’t actually touching so Wanda is surprised when Steve wraps his arm around her waist, pulling her close to him with an unwavering grip. 

“What—” she starts, then cuts herself off when she sees him. Rumlow is walking towards them, wearing athletic pants and a tight black t-shirt. There are no bulges at his hips, which means he probably isn’t packing, but the power in his stance is still unmistakable. Everyone has some Dom or Sub energy to them, though some people are casual enough to be mistaken for the opposite role. This is not the case with Rumlow— every inch of his posture, his body, his squared shoulders,  _ reeks  _ of dominance. Wanda nearly whimpers. 

His gaze is level, and though he isn’t staring at them he isn’t surprised when Steve stops in the middle of the path, making him address him. Rumlow looks then, first at Steve, meeting his eyes with a challenging glare, and then at Wanda. His eyes linger on her for a moment longer than acceptable, darting up and down quickly. Then Steve clears his throat, and his gaze returns to him. 

“The fuck are you doing here?” Steve spits, genuinely angry. Wanda raises her eyebrows, thinking for a moment  _ wow, you need to get your rocks off,  _ before remembering that  _ she’s  _ the person Steve’s supposed to get his rocks off with, and retracting that statement. 

Rumlow squares his shoulder, tilting his chin to look up at Steve, who’s taller. “I’m the new Avengers Liaison, or didn’t you hear? I help make sure all of the team's needs are met, whether it be in training, or in room accommodations. Though I don’t plan on working with  _ you _ anytime soon. Wanda, you got any requests?”

“Don’t address her,” Steve snaps, and Rumlow tilts his head to the side, looking like he wants nothing more than to start a fight— until his eyes find Wanda’s again. She isn’t using her powers, but the vibes she’s sending out are very non confrontational, and he seems to get that. He still doesn’t look happy when his eyes glaze over to Steve’s hand on her waist, but he isn’t about to start a fist fight. 

“I’ll address whoever I want,” Rumlow says, though his tone is lighter than before. “She’s part of the team, therefore she gets to make requests.” 

“I don’t have any requests,” Wanda says, trying to diffuse the tension more. It doesn’t work, and she regrets making both of the Dominants’ gazes land on her. 

“And if she does have any requests, she’ll take them up with me,” Steve says, tightening his grip on her waist. “I’m her Dom.”

Rumlow looks like he wants to disagree with that, but in the end, he doesn’t. “I’m in charge of training and room accommodations,” he repeats, more professional now. “Let me know if you need anything.”

He shoves past Steve then, and Wanda has the sudden urge to reach out to him. She can’t, but she has to do  _ something,  _ so as Rumlow walks away she reaches out with her mind and pulls his wallet out of his pocket, dumping it on the ground in front of him. She hears him make a noise of outrage, but then Steve is prodding her forwards and she doesn’t get the chance to look back again. 

  
  


———————————

  
  


Training isn’t particularly hard that day, but she has trouble getting into it. She wastes some time with extremely lighthearted yoga, only doing the basic moves to help her stretch out, and then goes a few rounds with the punching bag. Her brow is sticky with sweat when she feels a hand slide across her core, and freezes. 

“Tighten here,” Rumlow says, voice low and husky. “And stagger your stance more. It will help you keep moving.”

“Like this?” Wanda asks, flushing a little with how thick her accent is. She’s very aware of how close his body is to hers, his front nearly pressing to her side. 

“Yeah, that’s better. You should work on changing your level more too, it’s more realistic—”

“What the hell?”

Rumlow takes the smallest step back as Steve marches over, already sweat soaked from his own workout. “I’m helping her with her form,” Rumlow says dismissively, like Steve’s just being dramatic. “It’s part of my job.”

“Oh really? Wanda, what was he telling you?”

Wanda has to fight not to roll her eyes. Steve had no reason to suspect anything between the two of them, which made his posturing and possessiveness all the more irritating. “He said to stagger my stance and change my level. It’s good advice.”

Steve still looks peeved, and with a sigh, Wanda steps away from Rumlow’s warm body. She has to talk to Steve, and she knows better than to do it in front of another Dom. When they’ve stepped aside, and are in relative privacy, she says “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

Steve doesn’t even blink. “Look, I know you weren’t around back before the fall of shield, but Rumlow isn’t the type of guy you should trust. He doesn’t have an honest bone in his body; the entire time he was working for SHIELD, he was actually an agent of Hydra, and then as soon as soon as that didn’t work out he went back on his beliefs and gave everything up— all of his coworkers, employers, everything. He’s got the moral compass of a snake, and he should feel lucky to even be alive.”

Wanda stares you at him, not sure how to process all of that. She’s heard the story before, but something about the way Steve tells it makes her pause. “Are you saying… you would’ve respected him more had he stayed an agent of Hydra and been executed for it?”

Steve looked to the side, working his jaw. “Yes. I don’t like double agents, and he’s worse than that. It’s one thing to lie for the sake of what you think is right; it’s another thing to turn your back on your life philosophy for your own personal gain. He’s not just a snake, he’s a weasel, and I don’t want him anywhere near you.”

“He’s really fine,” Wanda argues, and Steve raises an eyebrow. She backtracks. “Look, I just don’t see the big deal. We’re in a public place, and besides, he’s unenhanced.”

“Meaning you can take him?”

“ _ Meaning  _ he’ll have advice for how to spar that you can’t give me,” Wanda corrects, and then, just for the effect, puts her hand on Steve’s arm and squeezes a little. In her experience, you can never go wrong with a little extra flattery to a dom’s ego. 

Steve’s eyes lose some of their fire after that, and he begrudgingly agrees to let Rumlow give her training tips, as long as she promises to tell him if anything goes wrong. “Rumlow’s a creep,” Steve reminds her, eyes serious. “Don’t let him get away with anything.” 

“Okay,” Wanda agrees. They leave the little side hall they’d ducked into, and Wanda walked back to the punching bag, feeling like her head was stuffed with cotton. Steve was a lot, but he wasn’t a liar, and his absolute assurance that Rumlow was no good made her feel a little antsy. Obviously, she trusted Rumlow, but Steve’s words made her wonder if she maybe trusted him too much?

She finishes off the morning of training without any other help from Rumlow, though she does see him a few times. He watches Natasha practice some of her skills, and claps at the end, not offering any feedback. He talks to Pietro for a moment, but leaves before Wanda has to consider intervening. He also does general gym-management duties, like cleaning machinery and replacing the towel station. At one point, he kneels near where Tony is standing in his full iron man suit, and chucks clay pigeons for Tony to use as target practice, Tony’s laugh echoing around the room. 

Eventually, it comes to lunchtime, and Wanda goes to find Steve. He’s doing an agility exercise, doing fast-feet and then dropping to the ground, doing a push-up, and jumping back up again, and when she asks if he’s ready to eat he tells her to go on without him. She shrugs, and goes, walking around the building in the grass. When she turns the corner, a figure grabs her, spinning her around once and pushing her up against the wall, one strong arm behind her back and the other on the wall by her head. Rumlow grins down at her, a little out of breath, and despite herself she chuckles. 

“One of these days, you’re going to surprise me and I’ll make your head explode,” she threatens, raising her hand and summoning the smallest bit of red energy. He laughs and wraps his hand around hers, carefully forcing it closed. “Consider me warned.”

He leans in, giving her a meaningful kiss on the cheek before pulling back and looking her over with softer eyes than before. “How are you? How’s your back?”

Wanda grimaces, shifting a little. She noticed the bruises he’d given her last night at certain points when training. She liked the reminder of the night, but would’ve preferred to have Rumlow instead of just having his marks. “It’s alright. How was you first day on the job?”

“Oh, awful,” Rumlow says playfully, grabbing a handful of her ponytail and slowly pulling it down, making her expose her neck. “There was the dumb blond guy who yelled at me a lot, I don’t know what that was about. On the plus side, there was this really pretty girl who wouldn’t stop looking at me…”

“Hmm,” Wanda hums, enjoying the flattery more than she intended to. “She sounds desperate.” 

“On the contrary, she already has a Dom. It doesn’t stop her from wanting me, though.”

“It sounds too good to be true.”

Wanda meant it as a passing comment, but Rumlow’s expression actually falls a little, his eyes softening. “It probably is. I don’t mind; I’ll take what I can get.”

“Well, we both know that’s untrue.” Wanda says, placing her hands on his clothed chest. “You don’t just take what you can get; you take whatever you want.”

Rumlow’s small smile turns feral. “You know it. Now go on, go to lunch. I’ve got… towels to fold.”

He lets go of her, and she steps away, even though she really wouldn’t mind staying within reach of him for longer.

  
  


——————————

  
  


Later that night, Wanda has already changed into her pajamas and is watching tv when she hears a noise from the other room. She doesn't pause her show, but she does wait, trying to figure out if it was just her imagination or not. There's a light creak of the floorboards, and she closes her eyes, sending her magic out to feel around the space. Someone's in her room, creeping towards the door. She senses… large. Tall. Broad feet… no, those are combat boots. 

"Have I ever told you how fucking cool your magic is?" Rumlow says, appearing through her doorway. Her magic is still surrounding him, red energy carding through his hair. 

She tucks her hands in between her thighs, and the magic dissipates. "Sorry." 

"Did you even hear what I said?" Rumlow teases as he comes forwards, shoving her back on the couch and climbing on top of her, pinning her down as he kisses her cheek and then her nose. She's momentarily struck by the realization that Rumlow is  _ intensely  _ sexual-- if he were with someone else right now, he would be kissing them long and hard. His little cheek kisses are only a fraction of what he wanted to do, his way of holding himself back. Wanda has a moment of panic where she worries she's not doing enough to satisfy her dom, but then he nuzzles up against her neck, letting more of his weight rest on her body, and the fear dissipates.

"I like your apartment," he says, pushing some of her hair away from her face. "You live alone?"

"No, I live with-- oh, there he is, hi Steve." 

Rumlow jerks so hard he nearly falls off the couch, and Wanda has to push herself into a sitting position, she's laughing so hard. Rumlow scowls, shoving at the side of her head roughly. "Brat." 

"May-be," she hums in a sing-song. 

His expression goes soft for a moment before he pushes himself to his feet, strolling away from the couch. Wanda leaned over, watching him look around her apartment. "Nice, there's a lot of space." 

"It's the smallest Avenger's apartment. I assume it's not personal." 

"Uh-huh. I like your rug." 

Wanda cranes her neck to see, then rolls her eyes. "It's a yoga mat," she corrects, unnecessarily, because he definitely knows and is just trying to get a rise out of her.

Rumlow crouches down, patting the mat. "C'mere."

He asked her to show him some poses, so she did, though only after getting out her extra mat and unrolling it for him. He seemed to be interested in it, so finally she just ran him through a sequence, loosening their muscles and opening their lungs.

"It's relaxing," he says as the impromptu session is coming to an end. "Do you have any favorite poses?" 

Wanda shrugs, not really knowing what he was getting at. "I like king pigeon. I'd probably be better at it if I did it longer." 

"Show me." 

Wanda notes that there is no question in his tone, just statement. She repositions herself on the mat, bending her knee in front of her with her foot off to the side, and bending her other leg behind her, so her foot was up in the air. She then bent backwards, until the back of her head rested against the curve of her foot, with her hands holding it in place. 

"Stay still," Rumlow orders, and Wanda immediately freezes, maintaining the position. Rumlow stands and goes back to her room, returning a moment later with a few coils of red rope. 

Wanda immediately knows what he is doing, though she isn't sure if she's more scared or excited. Either way, she holds still, accepting the innate control he has over her without question.

He kneels by her side, taking the rope and fashioning a basic harness around her chest, tightening it enough for her to feel it, and then wrapping the end of the rope around her calf, forcing it to remain in place. She lets out a little whimper when he ties off the final knot, but he just pats her hip condescendingly. With her leg secured, he takes her hands away from it, binding them behind her back. This reduces the amount of stretch her leg and back are getting, which he quickly remedies, wrapping another rope are her ankle and bringing it around her head, forcing the taut rope into her mouth, before tying the other side off on her ankle as well. The result was a makeshift bit gag, and her foot kept securely against her head, forcing her to maintain the stretch. 

"Looks good," he mumbles, standing to pace around her. He leans down every few moments, stroking down the aggressive curve of her back, or squeezing her knee, or pinching her side. Wanda, for the most part, holds still, though after a few moments of silence she wiggles a little, trying to get more comfortable, and he kicks her. "Bad." 

Wanda whines through the gag, and he slaps her this time, a light but mean slap to each of her cheeks, making her let out a quiet sob. She's completely at his mercy, and she knows it, and  _ he  _ knows it, and she hates it, and she never wants to be anywhere else. If she could, she would stay here always, reveling in all the ways he knew how to bring her misery into the forefront of her mind.

He crouches beside her, running her fingers along the rope held in between her jaws and making her close her eyes from the humiliation, and says "Fucking look at you. You like this so much."

Wanda doesn't look at him. She is sinking into a pit of mud at the bottom of a ravine, and she isn't struggling. She's letting it happen. He slaps her thigh, and she lets it happen. He kisses her cheek, and she let's it happen. He squeezes a hand around her throat, and she let's it happen, even as her vision feels like it's going a little cloudy. He only holds his grip there for a few seconds, so really she shouldn't be having such a reaction, but maybe it has less to do with the hand on her throat and more to do with the man squeezing it. Wanda knows, intrinsically, that there is something very dark and dangerous about the things that she wants. She knows that there is a very shadowy place in the back of her mind that likes this so very much its shameful. It's that part of her mind that begs  _ squeeze harder,  _ that wants Rumlow to bring her to the edge of unconsciousness, or past it. She wants him to touch her exactly as he wants to; wants him to take full ownership of her, to never check in on her again. It's not a realistic fantasy, but there's a dark part of her mind that revels in it. 

Rumlow is crouching next to her and grinning. "Oh yeah, you like this a lot. I should tie you up more often; gag you too. If I used a panel gag, it would keep you from making all of your noises. I can't tell whether I'd miss them, or whether the look on your face would be worth it." 

His hands were on her again, tight on her sides as he smeared them upwards, feeling her ribs as she strained to maintain the increasingly difficult pose. "Fuck. You should be seriously fucking glad we're not at my apartment right now. You don't want to think about what I would do to you right now if I had my cat o' nine on hand."

Wanda shivers, trying to close her mouth against the rope. She imagines it, imagines being beaten like this, imagines the type of discomfort caused by screaming in her current bondage. Just the thought makes her shakey and desperate-- or maybe that's from the difficult yoga pose she's been holding for full minutes now. 

Rumlow casually gets her out of the pose, untying some ropes and cutting others. Either way, within moments she is released, his hands bringing her legs together and scooping her up in his arms. He plops the both of them down on the couch, where the show from earlier is still playing on low volume, and manipulates her so he can pull his shirt off, tossing it aside. She curls up on top of his body, resting her cheek on his chest, and he pulls a thick blanket over them, mostly covering her head. "Stay there and rest," he says, like it's easy. His hand card through her hair, and she keens at the touch. "I want you to get comfortable, then hold still. Don't interrupt my show." 

Wanda nods against his chest, and he pulls her hair a little in approval. She gets comfortable with her head right over his heart, hearing its every beat, and relaxes.

She knows, in the back of her mind, that she has some desires that are pretty screwed up. But she isn't alone in them; Rumlow is right there with her, egging her on and exploiting her every fantasy. Maybe she shouldn't trust Rumlow as she does, with her heart, body and life, but she can't help it. 

She wonders, for the briefest moment, what she would find if she searched through his mind. She wonders if the violence would frighten her, or if it would simply feel like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are amazing 😱 And, just in case any of you are new to my works, I am always open to discussion or suggestions! Let me know if theres ever any specific things youd like me to give more attention to, and I'll see if I can make it happen ;)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter (Pt 2) will be out within 24 hours!

Wanda is sitting on Steve's lap when she notices a change in the air. 

Steve's been extra possessive ever since the night he supposedly dropped her. He seems to have the idea that he needs to be doing more to assert his dominance over her, and he's only encouraged by the fact that her light hasn't dropped to yellow all week. That's not his doing of course, but rather the doing of Rumlow, who she's seen every day, if only for a few minutes. 

Wanda has done her best to play nice with Steve, though. She goes along with what he wants as much as possible, so he doesn't start thinking she's some brat he needs to tame. As long as she's obedient, and he's not trying to push her limits, they can coexist. 

They're in the common room one afternoon, and Wanda is sitting on his lap, trying to read her phone and not think about his hand tightly gripping her hip. She gets distracted, however, when there seems to be some shift in the air. Thor looks up, sniffing, and after a moment Pietro stops grinding down on Clint to look up too.

The others seem to be unaware of the disturbance though, even though Wanda is starting to feel it not just in the room, but in her own mind. She sets her phone down so she can lift her hands slightly, sending her subconsciousness through the compound, finding the source of the weird energy. Her power hits someone else's, and her eyes widen. 

"What's going on?" Clint says, looking around. Steve has dropped his newspaper to frown, looking back and forth from Wanda to Pietro to Thor. 

"Oh no," he says. "Its--" 

The elevator dings open, and Wanda leaps off the couch, coming to the same conclusion as Steve at the same moment. "Uncle Loki!" She and Pietro yell in tandem, charging him. Pietro gets there first, naturally, blurring a few circles around him before launching himself at him, hugging one side so Wanda could throw herself at his other. Loki laughs, loud and heartily, hardly even stepping back to account for their weight. He, like Thor, looks relatively normal-sized until you actually get up close and realize he's bigger than he seems, an Asgardian trait. 

Wanda's power is still straining throughout the tower, so she can feel Thor standing, though he stays a few feet away. His tone gives off the impression of crossed arms, a small smile on his face. "Brother, what is the purpose of your visit?"

"Why, to see my favorite niece and nephew, of course!" Loki says, hefting both twins up off their feet in a big hug. "It's been too long." 

"It certainly has," Wanda beams. She can feel Loki's power through his clothes, and it ignites her insides. The mind stone is inlaid in a band of gold around his head, allowing him to use it's power as he wishes, and it's impossible not to feel drawn to it. The mind stone gave both her and Pietro their powers, birthing them into their new lives. And now, Loki wields it.

"Okay, I think that's enough," Tony says, and Loki scoffs and waves a hand, his magic pushing him back onto a couch. 

"I’m just dropping by for the weekend,” he announces, stepping forward to get out of the way of the elevator. A shorter girl dressed in a lavish tunic came out of it, carrying two duffel bags over her shoulders. “This is my associate, Sif. Tomorrow we will throw a party for your enjoyment! And don’t worry,  _ subs _ ,” he says, pulling Wanda and Pietro close again and throwing them a devilish smile, “are included.”

  
  


——————————

Wanda has to cancel her plans with Rumlow, telling him that she’ll be fine, and they can just have another session the night after next. He seems confused, but agrees, and that’s the end of that. 

Loki has a guest room he’s taken over in Thor’s apartment, but when he’s in town he prefers to spend his time in Wanda’s apartment, goading her to share information about her personal life in exchange for his own stories. Today, he has a tale about some mischief he got into involving an island off of Australia, tribal politics, and a naturally submissive prince. Wanda listens, wrapt, begging Loki for more and more explicit details. He gives them to her, telling about the drugs, sex, and violence he partook in. Unlike most of the Doms in her life, Loki doesn’t care about preserving her innocence by sparing her details. Even Rumlow has the bad habit, though Wanda thinks that’s more because of her sexuality (or lack thereof) than because of her submissive nature. 

She’s completely leaning against Loki by the end of the story, her head on his chest and his arm around her shoulders. She’s managing to hold herself back from crawling into his lap, but only barely. 

Loki notices her movements, and grins. “How are your powers coming along? My scouts have only told me good things.”

“They’re still erratic,” Wanda admits with a sigh. She raises her wrist, showing Loki the monitor. “Tony made this to help track my hormones. Blue means I’m more than good, and it goes down through the rainbow until I hit red. I’ve never actually reached red, but that’s the point when I’ll drop on my own, losing complete control of my powers.”

Loki hums, seeming more curious than anything else. “And how do you know this, if you’ve never hit red? Has anything happened at the result of these ‘erratic powers’ before?”

Wanda frowns, but shrugs. “No. But when I get to yellow and orange, it’s harder to control them. I’m more likely to act irrationally. Things move on their own. I could hurt someone.”

“Yes, you  _ could,  _ perhaps. But that doesn’t mean you will.”

Wanda gives him a sideways look. “Our powers aren't the same. You don’t even need a vessel to use your magic; I can hardly do anything without the use of my hands. You can’t act as if we have the same amount of control—”

“Control has nothing to do with it,” Loki interrupts. “Your job is not to contain yourself, your job is to maintain yourself. Avoid drops because they upset you, not because other people tell you to be afraid of them. The same with your powers; if other people are afraid you’ll lose control of your powers, then they should work to keep you happy. You’re a sub, my dear, you’re practically a princess. Act like it.”

Wanda scoffs. “Didn’t your sub carry in your bags today?”

“She’s not  _ my  _ sub, just  _ a  _ sub. She carried the bags on her own accord; I knew better than to tell her otherwise.”

  
  


————————————

Steve and Wanda get into a fight over what to wear to the party. Wanda wants to wear normal clothes, while Steve wants them both to dress up. She's been to a few Avengers parties before, and knows how they like to do things, but that doesn't mean she has to comply with it. 

Steve wasn't a fan of that idea. In the end, he doesn't push her around, just looks at her with that disappointed glare and tells her in his alpha-male voice what she should expect from the party. In the end, it is a battle of wills, and Wanda is the one who bends. 

Now, they're at the party, sitting on a mound of floor pillows. Wanda wishes she was wearing normal clothes, though Steve wasn't exactly cruel in choosing her outfit. She's wearing a tight red leather halter top that exposes some cleavage and a good portion of her back, along with a short pencil skirt. She's not able to wear a bra with the outfit, but under the skirt she's wearing black boyshorts that will hopefully give her a little more modesty if someone gets a view up her skirt. Which wouldn't be hard-- right now she's leaning against Steve as they sit on the floor, her legs bent to the side. It's comfortable enough for now, but eventually she'll be forced to find another way to sit. 

Along with that, her feet are decked in black heels, her hair is up in a high ponytail, and her eyes are lined with red and black eyeshadow, lips painted dark red. She doesn't mind the look, to be honest, just wishes it was more comfortable, and allowed her to move around more easily without risking exposing herself. 

On the bright side, she isn't actually the most exposed person here. On the contrary, she seems to be the only one who got the memo to wear  _ clothes.  _ Everyone is in various stages of undress, from Natasha who is wearing short leather shorts and a corset top, to Clint who's wearing a mesh shirt and what she's pretty sure are leather underwear. Pietro is standing at his side, wearing a full harness and collar set with leather pants. 

Wanda's pretty sure that it's Steve who's actually taking the cake, though. He opted to wear an aggressive leather harness instead of a shirt, the straps wrapping around his biceps, down his sternum, and wrapping around his back from underneath his pecs. His torso is huge and perfectly muscled, and his pecs are obnoxiously big. Wanda does her best not to stare at the way they flex and shift as he talks, but it's a constant battle. 

She doesn't have anyone to really talk to at the party, as Pietro is busy kissing up to the Doms, and Steve is currently talking to Tony. His hand is on the inside of Wanda's thigh as he talks, fingers pressing carefully against the fabric of her short skirt. It doesn't mean he's going to try anything; it's just his way of showing ownership. 

Across the room, Thor lunges forward and kisses Pietro full on the mouth, forcing his body to arch into him. Clint splutters out a surprised laugh, but doesn't seem at all displeased. The pairing pulls away, Pietro giving Thor a messy smile. 

"I wonder if you'd be happier like him," Steve murmurs, and Wanda jerks. Tony's left, leaving just her and Steve on the floor, and his hand on her thigh. "Group ownership works well for him. I don't feel like I'm doing enough for you."

"You're doing plenty," Wanda reassures, twitching a little when his hand pushes higher up her thigh. She pushes his hand away and pulls her skirt down the little bit she can get it, but he's unaffected. He scoops under her knees and spins her around, her legs over his lap now, her face close to his. 

"Show me that color," Steve orders, and Wanda raises her wrist immediately. It's yellow-green, kept that way from all her time around Loki in the past few days. 

Steve hums, leaning closer to nuzzle against her neck. "I want it blue by the end of the night." 

Wanda doesn't object, not even when he pushes closer, and she feels his naked chest against her hand, solid and impenetrable. "Yes, sir."

"You know, one of these days you’ll have to tell me the truth,” he muses, pulling away to look her in the eyes. “You can’t lie forever. I know yoga and meditation aren’t enough; one of these days, you’ll have to come to me. I’ll make a sub out of you yet.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the exciting part! And remember, I posted chapter 6 yesterday, so make sure you read that first!

Wanda sits on a barstool and drinks. She isn’t allowed to have a lot of alcohol because of her weak grip on her powers, but she can have some. Especially when Steve is elsewhere, not paying attention to her. 

She looks down into the drink, remembering Loki’s words. He encouraged her to be a force of nature, have others make accommodations for her instead of her making accommodations for them. She doesn’t know if it’s right. It seems like the type of thing a Dom would do, and in this moment, she feels incredibly restrained by her nature. 

“Hey honey,” Tony greets as he stumbles up to her. He’s at least tipsy, but besides the slightly affected walk, he doesn’t show it. “You know what I don’t get? I don’t get why your light is never blue. Is Steve not doing it for you?”

“Leave me alone,” Wanda complains, looking away. 

He puts his hands on the outside of her thighs, and she looks up, narrowing her eyes. “I created the monitor to help you,” he reminds, “And it’s done nothing. You’re sullen all the time, you barely let Steve touch you, and the only thing that seems to make you happy is fucking sunset  _ yoga,  _ which is just sad. If the only thing that gives you joy is emptying your mind, then you’re doing life all wrong.”

“Maybe I’m miserable because of my designation,” Wanda suggests, the words leaving her mouth before she can think to take them back. But they’re out, so she barrels on. “Ever think of that? Maybe I hate being a sub. Maybe being a sub is awful.”

“Your brother doesn’t think so,” Tony remarks, glancing behind him. Pietro is laughing loudly at something Clint said, his cheeks red with alcohol and joy. “Maybe you’re the problem.”

“Maybe  _ you’re _ the problem,” Wanda retorts. 

Tony raises an eyebrow. “Maybe I’m the solution. If Steve doesn’t do it for you—”

He slides his hand further up her thigh, and for a horrifying moment Wanda imagines what she could do to him. She sees her magic wrapping around his neck, the way his eyes would bulge as she strangled him. She knows what it would look like; she’s done it before. She wasn’t always an Avenger. She killed people. She could do it again. 

She doesn’t want to, is the problem, and she’s been drinking, and she’s terrified that if she keeps thinking those thoughts, her hands will raise and she’ll do it. That’s the problem, isn’t it? Her magic is easy. She knows how to use it. It’s not the magic that she has to hold back; it’s herself. 

She’s so horrified at her realizations that she doesn’t do anything to brush Tony off. He notices something off in her expression, though, and backs off. “Hey, you don’t have to. It’s just… a few of us were talking earlier, and we thought group ownership may be for the better. Or, you could just try doing things with another Dom. I’m sure Natasha would be willing—”

“What if I don’t want to be dommed by another Avenger?” Wanda challenges. “My entire life is in this compound, why does my Dom have to be too?”

Tony shrugs, frowning and tilting his head to the side. “I don’t know. You raise a good point, it’s just… who else would be able to handle you? What if you have a bad drop, and your powers get out of control? And besides, there’d have to be a whole vetting process. We’d have to find someone compatible, not to mention someone we can trust.”

That phrase,  _ someone we can trust,  _ sinks deep into her mind. So, it’s a no on Rumlow, then. Most of the Avengers tolerate him better than Steve does, but they don’t trust him. And why should they? He has a history of betrayal. 

It’s just then that Wanda hears a familiar voice.  _ Speak of the devil.  _

__ “I’ve got more booze!” Rumlow announces loudly, holding up two large bottles. “And more cocktail napkins! And condoms, as you requested, Lord Loki. Three boxes, and no, I’m not going to ask.”

“Magnum?” Loki clarifies, pulling himself away from the three subs he was dancing with to retrieve the box Rumlow had offered. 

“Extra small,” Rumlow says, grinning fiercely. 

Loki tips his head to laugh. “Marvelous! Although, I should hope for the sake of your job that you’re joking.”

“I should hope for the sake of your dick that you’ll pace yourself,” he retorts, then says a quiet, “Excuse me.”

Then Rumlow is walking straight towards Wanda, two cloth grocery bags over his shoulders. Wanda is still so stunned by his presence that she hasn’t thought of what to do, how to address him, but she’s saved from that decision when Rumlow slights right, going to unload the drinks behind the bar. He still manages to look up though, catching Wanda’s eye. “Hey, sweetheart.”

In front of her, Tony crosses his arms. “Were you talking to me? I assume that you were talking to me.”

Rumlow gives him a strained smile, and grunts a little as he lifts the heavy bottles onto the counter. Then he steps in front of Tony, pushing him back against the counter. “How’d you know? What do you say Stark, should we take this somewhere private? I heard a rumor that you have a lab in every building in the Compound. We could go to the nearest one, I could fuck you over your desk. How does that sound?”

Wanda is about ready to piss herself, but Tony manages to retain some sense of calm. “I’m a Dom, actually.”

Rumlow grunts at the back of his throat. “Could’ve fooled me.” 

“Right.” Tony narrows his eyes, then pointedly pushes Rumlow back, stepping to the side. “Enjoy the party.”

Wanda isn’t sure what Rumlow was going for with that whole act, but it is at least successful in getting the two of them alone. Rumlow proceeds to finish unpacking the grocery bags, not looking at her, though the tension between them is practically palatable. Wanda sticks her hands under her thighs so she doesn’t do something she regrets— like, say, reach out to him with her magic and caress his hair. It’s funny how different her impulses are with Rumlow versus Tony. 

“Sometimes the best way to get a Dom to fuck off is to make a move on them,” Rumlow comments, still not looking at her. “I also really think he could be sub. He gives off that air, you know? It's a conspiracy.”

Wanda barely heard what he said. “What are you doing here?”

He pulls out a packet of little green squares, waggling them at her. “Loki called me. Said you needed more napkins.”

“Why do you have a cloth grocery bag?”

Rumlow gives her a weird look. “Save the fishies? Besides, the plastic ones are such a hassle.”

“I— nevermind.” Wanda rests her forehead on her hand, wondering how the fuck this came to be her life. 

“Don’t worry, I won’t be here long,” Rumlow reassures, still unloading the bags. “You look good, by the way. Who picked out that getup you’re wearing?”

“Steve.”

“Hmm. He’s got good taste.”

She glances up at him. “I’ve got good taste too.”

“Sure, sure. I just figured you wouldn’t have chosen a skirt like that.”

Wanda makes a face. “Are you slut shaming me?”

“Prude shaming you, actually. I don’t care how long the skirt is, I just pay attention, alright? I know what sort of things you typically go for.” His eyes glance down for a moment, and he frowns. “Why are you sitting on your hand?”

Wanda quickly notices her mistake, and sticks her other hand under her butt too, no longer leaning on it. “I’m drunk. I’ll break something.”

“And that’s a problem how..?”

Wanda glares at him, but he’s officially dared her, and the impulse is too much. She moves off of her hands and uses her magic to rip the cup of beer from Clint’s grasp across the room, making him call out a surprised “Whoa!”, and throws it at Rumlow. The cup bounces off his thick skull, splattering the contents all over him.

“You absolute bitch!” He declares, delighted. 

“Hey, hey, break it up,” Captain Misery says, pushing between them. His nipples are hard, Wanda notices, and considers very briefly blowing up the entire compound. Perhaps she’s had enough to drink for the night. 

“Is he bothering you?” Steve asks, clearly hoping for one answer over the other. 

“Very much,” Wanda says, though she can’t hide her smile. “I think we should throw him out the window.”

“We can’t throw him out the window, he’s on our payroll,” Steve scolds, though his expression does soften at the thought. “Come on, Thor was just telling me a joke. You’ll like it.”

He leads Wanda away, and she looks back at Rumlow only once. He’s watching her, a small smirk on his lips, and with a flick of her hand she rips his wallet out of his pocket and throws it at the punch bowl. He fumbles, trying to grab it in time, but misses and it falls into the bowl with a splash. Maybe it’s mean, but he deserves it, Wanda decides. Besides, she’s sure he’ll make her pay for it later.

  
  


——————————

  
  


They’re at the party for another hour before Wanda convinces Steve to let her go. She’s been sitting in his lap for almost the entire time, and he’s gotten just drunk enough to be extra cuddly, nuzzling up against her and trying to squeeze her to death in his arms. Finally though, he agrees, checking in to make sure she has a good plan. “I’ll just shower and go to bed,” she promises. 

“Good,” he says, sighing into her hair. “It’s… late. And we have work tomorrow. Work, work, work. Always work.”

“Okay, Steve,” she says, as if talking to a little kid, and disentangles herself from his grip. She leaves the party and walks back to the building that has her apartment in it, taking the stairs instead of using her powers. She unlocks the door, steps inside, and isn’t in the least bit surprised to see Rumlow spread out on her couch, bare from the waist up. 

“Did you lose your shirt?” She asks, fumbling to take off her heels.

“Nah, some obnoxious Sub poured beer on it,” he replies easily, stretching out even more. “It’s fine. I’m sure someone’s gonna teach them their lesson.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Wanda agrees, still fumbling with her shoes. Rumlow whistles at her, calling her over, and she sighs and goes, sitting on the coffee table next to him. He has her put her feet up on the couch, and takes his time unlatching and pulling off each of her heels. 

“There you go, free from your torture,” he teases. 

“And yet you’re still here,” Wanda retorts. 

He snorts, seeming genuinely delighted. “Wow, you really get mean when you’re drunk, huh?”

“Yeah,” she admits, looking down but still smiling. “Sorry.”

She knows it’s not the most flattering trait, but he doesn’t seem to mind in the least. “So, I’m here. We could spend some quality time together. We could do a scene. Or, I could just fuck off. Which would you prefer?”

The suggestion is open-ended, giving her the power to say what she wants, and know it will be respected. She appreciates the hell out of it, though she doesn’t actually know what she wants. Mostly, she just wants to be clean and go to bed, but she doesn’t want to kick him out either.

She thinks back to their earlier conversation, something that had bothered her. Rumlow had made a joke about her skirt, and how she didn’t normally like to wear things like that. Not a joke— an  _ observation.  _

She looks down at herself, at the halter top she’s wearing, which doesn’t allow for a bra to be worn with it, and remembers the tank top she wears when with Rumlow, and how she still wears a bra with it, day in and day out. She hides herself away, even from him, and for what? He knows her limits, knows what she will and will not do. It’s like Loki said— it shouldn’t be her job to protect other people, enforce other people, make things  _ easy  _ for other people. Not at her own expense. 

“You think we could take a bath?” Wanda asks, hoping she sounds casual. 

Rumlow makes an unreadable noise. “We, as in both of us? Naked?”

Wanda shrugs. “Sure. We could get… bubbles. Neither of us would have to see anything.”

Rumlow stared at her for a long, hard second, then shrugged. “Sure.”

  
  


————————————

  
  


A few minutes later, and Wanda’s wondering if she’s making the right decision. Rumlow is a sexual man, a fact that she’s always known, but that was reminded to her when he was talking to Tony. He has desires that she just doesn’t— what if he misunderstands her intentions? It wouldn’t exactly be hard. 

She can’t help the desire to find out, though. As little as she wants things to go wrong, she still wants to  _ know  _ if they can go wrong. None of the Avengers trust Rumlow, thinking him a liar, a betrayer. This is his chance to prove them wrong. 

Rumlow is already in the bath, stark naked, or so she assumes. She threw a purple fizzy bath bomb in there before he got in, making the water opaque, which should help with her little expiriment. If it goes right, it will keep either of them from seeing more than necessary. The thing is, Wanda has always liked the idea of being naked with someone, knowing the intimacy and close contact it would mean. She just doesn’t want to be…  _ naked.  _ She doesn’t want them to see her fully exposed, she doesn’t want them to touch her in the places that would normally always be covered. She just likes the idea of skin to skin contact, like when she lays on Rumlow’s chest after a rough scene. 

“You ready?” Rumlow asks, comfortably reclined in the tub. He has a dark blindfold on over his eyes, but has still probably been listening for the past minute as she’s undressed. She’s naked now, but doesn’t actually know the answer to that question. 

“Yeah,” she says, knowing that he’ll stop if she sounds too unsure. She has to do this though, has to know the truth. If she can’t trust him, she’d rather know now than later. 

So she climbs into the tub, stepping in carefully, so she doesn’t crush his legs. The tub is moderately big, but they’ll still have to be close. 

“You can sit on either side,” Rumlow says, voice soft and compassionate. “On the other side, or with me. Let me know if I need to move.”

Wanda shakes her head, even though he can’t see. She can’t seem to get words to come out. This is it— the moment that will define everything, one way or another. 

She probably should’ve done this when sober, though to be honest, she doubts she could’ve. 

So, she carefully navigates until she is able to lower herself to sit down on his lap. She’s completely nude, and though the suds come up to cover her chest, she’s definitely forgotten about a certain part of  _ his  _ anatomy that she’s surely about to encounter. Don’t dicks float? Isn’t that a thing? Should she— move? She doesn’t want to touch it, but she probably should’ve touched it by now, and— why hasn’t she touched it?

She shifts, confused, and nearly jerks out of the water when he skin hits cloth. “The fuck?” She mutters, and Rumlow chuckles. 

“Sorry, I probably should’ve warned you, I’m wearing a jockstrap. I thought it’d be better of I kept  _ him  _ tucked away.” 

“He seems  _ pretty  _ tucked away,” Wanda comments, getting comfortable. She sits slightly to the side, resting her head on his arm which is stretched out around the edge of the bath. 

“He is,” Rumlow says, teasing. “You comfy? Can I take the blindfold off, or should I keep it on?”

Wanda is still having a hard time using her voice, so she just reaches up and pulls it off. Immediately, Rumlow’s eyes are on hers— not wandering anywhere else, or testing the opacity of the water— and he leans forward, kissing her forehead. “You good?”

“Yeah,” she whispers. “I’m— good.”

Rumlow leans back even more, fully relaxing in the water and looking up at the ceiling with a small smile, eyes half-glazed. “I literally don’t remember the last time I had a bath. Do you do this often?”

“Maybe once a week?” Wanda offers. “I— kind of have to. I have a collection of bath bombs that’ll probably last until I die.”

That was courtesy of Steve, of course. Wanda told him that long baths helped keep her from dropping, so he practically bought out a lush store. That was back when he was just trying to support her in any way possible, before he became obsessed with getting her to rely on him instead of her ‘alternative medicine’, the yoga and baths and healthy eating and whatnot. Wanda wonders if his newfound unease came as a result of her recent drop, or because he was starting to suspect that she wasn’t being honest. Probably the latter, if their conversation at the beginning of the party meant anything. 

“You comfortable?” Rumlow asks, and Wanda actually assesses the position she’s in. She shrugs, then moves around, getting into a position where she can rest her cheek on his chest, both of them torso to torso. He can probably feel her boobs resting against his skin, mostly underwater, but if he does he doesn’t comment on it. He wraps his arm around her, rubbing up and down her back, not getting even remotely close to anywhere salacious. Normally, when she was clothed his hand would dip lower, or he’d rub her sides too, her thighs, her hips. But not now. It’s as if he knows that it’s different like this. 

She curses inside her head. Of  _ course  _ he knows it’s different like this; that’s why he’s being careful with his hand, with his eyes, with his fucking  _ dick.  _ He wore a jockstrap into the bathtub because he knew it would make Wanda more comfortable. She didn’t have to ask, she didn’t have to police him; he took care of it. 

She looks up at him, her chin against his chest. He poured some water on her hair, wetting it, and she closes her eyes in ecstasy at the luxurious heat, only opening her eyes again when he brings his hand back to rest on her back. “I really can trust you, can’t I?”

He looks down at her, smiling smally. He doesn’t mock her, just smiles. He is unlike anyone she’s ever met. “I hope so.”

In the end, she falls asleep like that, skin to skin in the heat of the water. He wakes her a while later, and has her move to the other side of the tub and close her eyes as he gets out. Once he’s out and has a towel wrapped around his waist, he gets another towel out and pulls his blindfold back on, letting her climb out of the tub unseen. She sidles up to him, allowing him to wrap the towel around her blindly, and then kisses him on the cheek for good measure. They get clothed again, and climb into bed together, both of their heartbeats slow and their breaths already evening out. And, as they cuddle under the covers, eyes closed, Wanda reaches out with her magic, going into Rumlow’s mind. She hardly scratches the surface, doesn’t even go deep enough to read his current thoughts, but she can feel them. They’re warm and soft. He’s happy. Maybe— just maybe— he’s in love. 

Wanda pulls back her magic, and snuggles in closer as she falls back asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Personally I was a big fan of this chapter :> Let me know what you thought!


	8. Chapter 8

It’s about a week later when they get the call to assemble. It seems like a pretty normal call, but Steve tells her to wear the new body armor Tony designed for her, so it takes a while for her to get ready. In the end, she’s the last one on the quinjet, which is why the ramp is already raising when she sees Rumlow there. 

She freezes, eyes locking on him, but he isn’t looking at her. His head is low, talking in hushed tones with Thor, and it’s one of the first times she’s ever seen him fully decked out in his gear. He’s all darkness and straps and thick Kevlar, handguns holstered to his thighs and a massive automatic rifle across his thighs. Wanda would be having a lot more appreciative thoughts, if she wasn’t so surprised to see him here. 

All of the Avengers are present and accounted for, it seems, and for the first time the Quinjet actually seems to be at capacity. Even Sam Wilson’s here, sitting with his arms crossed on one of the benches. 

Steve puts his hand on Wanda’s waist and leads her to one of the benches, and in her daze she lets him, sitting down close to his side. “Why’s he here?”

“Bigger mission,” Steve says, voice steely. “We called in whatever backup we could.”

Natasha stood then, and went over the mission briefing. Supposedly humanoid swamp-creatures had been released in Seattle, and the CIA had been on it before having to retreat. Now the Avengers were stepping in, with the goal to contain the situation before sunrise, so people could still commute to work the next day. 

“They could just take a day off,” Wanda complains. 

“If we don’t do our jobs, they might have to,” Steve points out. “Nat, what do we know about the creatures so far?”

“The CIA reported that they reacted well to penetrative weapons, so we should focus on using our guns. They’re durable, so headshots work the best. We’re also supposed to be weary, because the creatures showed signs of higher brain function and strategizing. They’re not mindless.”

Wanda thinks about this as they fly to Seattle, trying to come up with a strategy for killing the monsters. She found it hard to focus at first— she’d be seeing Rumlow in action for the first time, see him handling his gun and using his Hydra training— but soon she managed to quiet her mind. She closed her eyes, sending her magic out across the floor of the quinjet and using it to create a mental picture in her mind as a warm up. She wouldn’t let herself get distracted during the mission: she was an Avenger, a member of the most elite combat team to ever exist. She could, and would, handle whatever obstacle was thrown her way. 

They arrive in Seattle lands a few separate times, dropping off various members of the team and spreading out their defenses. Wanda and a few of the others get off at the last stop, and Wanda is walking down the ramp, making sure her comm fits, when Steve pulls her back by her wrist. 

“Steve—” she starts, but he cuts her off. 

“I’m not happy about this,” he admits under his breath. They’re in relative privacy, with all of the Avengers ahead of them, so the fact that he’s keeping his voice low irks her somehow. She gets tired of Steve and his secrets, his warped view of privacy. “If I’m honest, I’d prefer that you weren’t here.”

Wanda looks at him, trying to understand him, but like always, she can’t. Steve Rogers is a different creature altogether, and she’ll be damned if he ever decides to speak clearly. “Why? Because Rumlow—”

“Because you’re a sub,” he says, squeezing her hands tightly. “You deserve better than this.” 

“I’m an Avenger,” she corrects. “This is where I’m meant to be.”

Steve looks physically pained as he brings a hand up to touch her face. Wanda wants to slap it away— it’s affecting her concentration, the focus she gathered up on the ride here. “Still, I wish you were safe. That I didn’t have to worry about you getting hurt. You can deny it all you want, but you are a sub, and that makes you fragile. It’d be so much better if you just stayed back, and I could return to the compound knowing you were there all along, but… I guess that’s not the world we live in. Stay safe. That’s all I mean.”

Then he  _ steps away,  _ like he didn’t just drop a bombshell of a fantasy on her. God— he wants her to  _ stay at home.  _ He thinks she’s…  _ fragile?  _ And the way he portrayed the fantasy, it was like he thought it’d be sweet, like she might actually want it to. Like she could ever be happy sitting at the compound and painting her nails while other people put their lives at risk. 

The creature is on her almost before she can realize it, knocking her to the ground. She is forced into a roll and raises her hands right as it lunges, catching it in a red burst of energy only a foot away from her face. She catches her breath as she sees its face— almost human, but not, with a large mouth full of pointed teeth, skin pulled low over where it’s eyes should be, and slits for a nose. It’s skin is gray and green, dripping with mucus, and she has to focus to remember what Natasha said about penetrative shots. She doesn’t have a gun, but she can get creative. Using her left hand to maintain the power currently keeping the monster frozen, she uses her right to flick a bolt of magic through its skull. She rolls to the side and releases it, and the monster collapses forward, twitching as it dies. 

“Fuckers,” she mutters, then winces, waiting for Steve’s scolding. The comms stay quiet though, and when she tests them with a “Can anyone hear me?” all she gets is silence. 

So her comms are busted, great. 

She surveys the fight and kills a few creatures from a distance, testing out different maneuvers and ways to kill them. She crushes one’s skull, sends a rock through another’s head, and throws another hard against a wall. They all die except for the last, which is killed a moment later by an arrow to the forehead. 

The beasts don’t seem too interested in her, most of them going after Steve a hundred feet away, and even more attempting to climb up the building to get to Clint’s sniper nest. She takes the time to survey the fight, grow her defenses. One beast lunges at her, it’s wicked-looking claws raised to attack, but she blasts it with energy and it disintegrates. Another gets smart and tries to go behind her, but she sees in a reflection and dodges it’s attack, rolling and coming up hands raised. That one gets it’s head blown off it’s shoulders, and more come to take its place as they begin to realize she’s a threat as well. She keeps moving as she fights, sending out her power as she goes, using her magic to sense the space around her, allowing her to dodge and deflect attacks. As time passes, she falls into the rhythm of it. Her focus is eagle sharp, her mind racing to make calculations, and even as her body and mind ache with exertion, it’s sustainable. She feels like a runner, halfway through; the starting pains are gone, her insecurities lost in the fog of the motion. It hurts, but very little could get her to stop. 

She’s worked her way away from the block where Steve still fights, she realizes, and her ears pick up on a new noise. Instead of the ringing snaps of the shield, she’s hearing a methodical  _ Bang! Bang! Bang! _ It’s rhythm is perfect, worthy of marching to. Wanda isn’t even surprised when she sees its Rumlow, standing close to a building, taking creatures out one by one with perfect headshots. He moves from one target to the next, firing only once each, and pivots at just the right time to catch one coming up on his flank. His clip runs empty at one point, though he doesn’t seem surprised. He drops the empty clip, spins and hits a creature in the head with the butt of his gun, and fires at another one at almost the same moment with a smoothly drawn handgun. 

Wanda is about to raise her hands to kill the beast coming up behind him, but he shoots it in the chest and then grabs it in a headlock, twisting and flipping it. It’s neck snaps in half, and it’s body falls to the ground. 

_ He’s human,  _ Wanda reminds herself.  _ That’s all him.  _

__ She realizes, too late, that she’s lost her focus. She turns and yelps as a monster comes face to face with her, about to bite her face off, but it explodes before it can. She’s stuck staring at where it used to be, before she realizes she’s surrounded in a circle of red energy. Her powers activated without her realizing, leaving a mass of bodies at her feet. 

She pulls the magic back in, trying to keep it contained. Their block is almost clear, and she kills the last one as she marches over to Rumlow. He straightens, loading a new clip into his automatic, and scans the surroundings for more creatures before giving her a quick smile. “Kneel with me.”

They both drop to one knee, angled away from each other with their backs to a brick building. She can hear Rumlow messing with one of his handguns, but she forces herself to stay looking forward, watching for more creatures. A few come near, but she only kills the ones that turn down their street. 

“Do your powers ever run out?” He asks, voice strict and calm, a commander through and through. 

“No. I can get exhausted, but that’s because the powers aren’t mine. I’m just the catalyst.”

“Crazy. But still super fucking cool. I wish someone would use one of the stones to make me a gun that doesn’t run out of bullets, like some of those old World War 2 models, you know?”

She frowns, remembering seeing the glowing blue weapons in a picture Steve showed her. “Are you talking about the Hydra weapons? The ones Steve tried to destroy?”

“Hey, they may be Hydra, but they were good quality. I mean, except for the part where they blew up at random and weighed like 30 pounds. But aside from that—” he pauses to take another headshot, then holsters his handgun and stands. “It’s cool tech, that’s all. Do you think you could get me to the top of that building?”

He points, and she shrugs. “Sure. I can probably even do it without breaking your legs on impact.”

“That’d be great, thanks.”

She uses her powers to launch him upwards, then twists her hands, trying to lower him at a reasonable speed without too much force. Throwing things like slabs of metal and monsters around isn’t too hard, because she doesn’t have to monitor her use of force. Lifting up and depositing people? It takes a little more focus. 

Once he’s safe, she runs around the block, finding Natasha in a firefight with more of the beasts. Pietro is there too, rounding them up and bashing their heads in, but the monsters just keep coming. Wanda reaches out, extending her powers further over the battlefield, then attacks. 

The battle continues on for a long time after that. Somewhere along the way, her powers extend over the entirety of the field, and even as she fights she is aware of everything that goes on around her. She hears every shot Rumlow takes, feels his boots on the roof ten stories above her head; she feels Natasha roll and dodge, her gun taking out beast after beast. She can feel Steve’s shield meet its targets, feel Clints arrows as he looses them from his bow, feel Thor’s aura of electricity as he blasts monster after monster to pieces. She feels Pietro’s presence strongly, can practically feel his heart beating in her own chest. She’s even aware of Tony and Sam doing aerial support high above her, knows the flutter of Sam’s wings as he dives into one street or another, taking out a horde of monsters with his guns as they leap for him. Wanda knows the battlefield like she knows the soles of her feet, the soft hair on the back of her neck. She saves Natasha from a nearly deadly attack. She throws a beast in Pietro’s path so he tears through it. She blows up monster after monster. 

In a life full of confusion, the  _ fight  _ is all she really understands. 

Soon, the fight is all around her. She can feel the battlefield grow smaller, her teammates pull in closer as the beasts climb over each other. The street is covered in slime and though the creatures don’t seem to care, it makes the Avengers slip. So Wanda pulls her magic in, narrowing it to only the current fight. She feels her grasp on Clint in a sniper’s nest and Tony in the sky fade away; she no longer knows where Rumlow’s footfalls land. But she can feel the blood pumping in every one of the creatures around her, and with a thrust of her hands, she sends the slime rolling away from the fight in a tidal wave of what can only be described as sewage and pus. The next moment, Steve decapitates a monster with his shield, and Natasha kills one with a headshot, the both of them moving in perfect unison. Her team has once again gotten the upper hand. 

Then there’s a slip. Wanda doesn’t feel it, she just knows it in the back of her mind, and spins, raising both hands to catch Rumlow’s body before he can hit the ground. He must have been pushed off the building— either that or he jumped— and she caught him barely in time, his body hovering seven feet in the air. She doesn’t get the chance to lower him gracefully, though, as a beast tackles her. She gasps, the wind knocks out of her, and a moment later her mouth is filled with blood. Her awareness of the battlefield collapsed under the weight of saving Rumlow, and now she can hardly focus as the beast attacks her, roaring proudly above her as it lashes out with its claws. There is pain, and then the beast is gone, hurled against the wall. 

Pietro helps her to her feet. “I’m fine,” Wanda insists, even though she can feel the blood on her face. 

“We protect each other,” he swears. A few feet away, the beast rises up again, not quite dead, but a shot from Natasha puts it down for good. 

Wanda is thrust back into the fight. She’s still bleeding, and her mind is buzzing with energy. Somewhere along the line, she overextended herself, but that’s a problem for later. For now, she just fights, and fights, and fights, until the last monster is ripped off a building and Thor decimates it with a sharp arc of lighting. All of the Avengers stand together, breathing heavily as they survey the field, looking for more threats. There are none. Wanda should confirm that fact by extending her powers again, but she isn’t willing to risk it, the buzzing in her head only growing louder. She focuses instead on calming down and spits out some of the blood that pooled in her mouth. 

Steve jogs over to her, frowning. He takes her chin in her hand, tilting it up to inspect the gash on her face that’s been giving her grief. “A surface wound.”

“Steve,” Natasha says, but Steve waves her away. 

“I see it. Wanda, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she reassures, taking a step back from his touch. His gaze is too serious, eyes too assessing. “It’s just a scratch.”

He frowns intensely. “Did something happen? Did you have to defend yourself?”

She only took another step back, raising her right hand to keep the distance between them. She kept her left hand low, fingers extended. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, we were in the middle of a fight—”

“Rumlow,” he clarifies, stepping into her space  _ again.  _ “Did something happen with  _ Rumlow?” _

__ “Rumlow?” She repeats. She doesn’t understand. Why would—?

She looks past Steve at the other Avengers. They’re all standing down, no longer looking for a fight, but they’re still tensed, all facing the same direction as if they know where there’s still danger of a fight. Wanda follows Natasha’s gaze around the side of a building into an alley, where… where red energy glows brightly, casting the entire side of the building in harsh red light. Inside the light, as if cocooned by the power, lays Rumlow, his eyes closed. 

Wanda looks down and realizes her left hand remains held by her hip, fingers spread and maintaining the power. She panics and squeezes her fist shut, and the lights flickers, and Rumlow falls, gasping. She raises both hands to catch him in light, then shakily lowers him down, resting him on the ground with the same delicacy as she’d rest an artifact— like he might shatter, like she might destroy him. The light flickers out, and he rolls over and dry heaves. 

Steve tries to grab for her, but Wanda dodges him, sprinting for Rumlow. Her hands are on him in a second, one on his side and the other on his back as he heaved. He stopped for long enough to choke on his own air, and wave her away. “Back off. I need— space—” and then he was heaving again. 

“Wanda—” Steve says from a distance, but Wanda shakes her head. 

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, hoping Rumlow can hear. “I’m so sorry, Rumlow,  _ Brock,  _ I didn’t mean—”

He gags, and she can’t help herself. She’s back kneeling by his side in a second, purposefully not touching, and uses her magic to rip a water bottle from Steve’s hands, giving it to him. He drinks it greedily, water spilling down her chin, but all Wanda can see is  _ red light  _ and  _ his body cocooned.  _ She did that, she— without even realizing, she trapped him in her magic, a coffin of light and fire, a burial seven feet in the air—

“I’m fine,” Rumlow grunts, still trying to catch his breath. “I’m— fine. Just need a second.”

“I’m so sorry, this is all my—”

“Don’t,” he says, meeting her eyes intensely. “You caught me. I thought I was about to pancake on the pavement, but you caught me. I just— I don’t think my body was prepared for such a sharp stop. Or, you know. To hang out there for a while—” his words melt into another coughing fit, and Wanda dares to put her hand on his back. He doesn’t object, so she keeps it there, staying close to his side as he recovers.

The battle is cleaned up quickly, and they’re carefully herded to the quinjet. Wanda stays close to Rumlow’s side the entire time, subtly be damned. Steve, thankfully, doesn’t object, and debriefs with Tony in the cockpit instead of giving her alternatingly worried and dirty looks. 

“I’m alright,” Rumlow promises once they’ve taken off, voice low so the others can’t hear. His hair is wet with sweat, and there’s a trauma blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He’s not alright, no matter what he says, but Wanda knows when to bite her tongue.

Someone brings over the medical supplies, and Rumlow makes her sit still as he cleans the cuts on her face. When she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she recoils; there are three sharp talon marks on her cheek, and the blood got everywhere. Rumlow takes his time sopping up the blood and disinfecting the wound, caring for her with the tenderness of a long time partner. Wanda feels herself relax further with every touch; he doesn’t hate her, he’s not scared of her. He wants to take care of her. He  _ cares  _ for her. 

Across the quinjet, she hears Clint whisper to Pietro, “Don’t they seem a little close to you?” 

Pietro whispers back, “They both had a pretty dramatic moment. Rumlow’s still a dom, this is just how they’re checking in with each other. Not everything is romantic, you know.”

Beside him, Natasha hums. Wanda doubts that her lies are as solid as they once were, but at this point she’s too deep to care. Rumlow wipes another stain of blood away, tucks a lock of her hair behind her ears, and the Quinjet is silent for the rest of the ride back. 

Steve only emerges from the cockpit as they land, staying standing as he clasps his hand around Wanda’s upper arm. “Shower, change, then come to my apartment. That’s an order. We’re going to take care of that light.”

Wanda had almost forgotten about her monitor. With a feeling of absolute dread, she looks down and sees the light on her monitor glowing a bright, cheerful,  _ red.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're coming up near the end! Two more chapters to go, and then an epilogue (at least, that's the plan 👀)
> 
> It only gets spicier from here.


	9. Chapter 9

Wanda follows Steve’s orders to a T. She leaves the quinjet like she’s her own police escort, not looking back at Rumlow, or Pietro, or anyone else who’s there to witness her shame. She goes to her apartment and strips, scrubbing herself down in the shower and trying to calm her stormy mind. She keeps seeing her monitor in the corner of her eye, flashes of silver and red, and she realizes quite clearly she hates it. How long has it been since she’s gone without it? How long since she’s been truly naked? The monitor has tainted her interactions for months, with everyone from Tony to Rumlow, and though everyone in the building has hormonal fluctuations that could lead to some pretty impressive violence, she’s the only one they track. Maybe she’s the only one who’d  _ let them  _ track. 

She’s wearing clean clothes, hair pulled up in a bun, when she arrives at Steve’s apartment. He sets her to start making tea, and she wonders if this is the moment she’s been waiting for for so long. Her light is red; now is when it all happens. Maybe Steve will rape her, maybe he’ll just make her drop; either way, he’ll touch her, and she doesn’t want him to. She doesn’t want his hands anywhere near her.  _ She’s not his to touch.  _

__ As she makes the tea, she thinks about things. Thinks about Rumlow’s dark expression when he saw Steve’s hand around her bicep. Thinks about the glowing monitor light that never shuts off. Thinks about how, really, she should be feeling worse, shouldn’t she? The light means that she should practically be dropping right now, right this second, the tea crashing to the ground, her breathes coming in sharply, panic and depression setting in. Steve and Tony think that’s when she’ll lose control of her powers, where she’ll blow up the world or at least the compound. Wanda doesn’t feel like that’s going to happen, though, and right about now she doesn’t need submission to keep her from going over that edge. She  _ wants  _ comfort. She  _ wants  _ to be with Rumlow, talk to him, make sure he’s okay after being at the mercy of her powers for so long. Maybe they could watch a movie together, and he could hold her. She wouldn’t drop then— how could she? In his arms, she’d be safe. 

She finishes making the tea and stares into the murky brown surface. Steve doesn’t make her carry it over, which she appreciates, but that only means he comes to her, tilts her chin up, makes her look in his eyes. “You followed my orders, good job. Now, as you know, your light is red. It’s my job to bring you back from that edge and away from danger, and as my Sub, I need you to trust me to do that. I’m your Dom, and you’re going to follow orders.”

_ Except you’re not my Dom.  _

__ “I think we’re going to have to do something a little outside of your comfort zone,” Steve continues, as if Wanda’s comfort zone is something to be pushed past, futile boundaries made of mud instead of brick. “Which is why it’s so important that you trust me. Now, strip.” 

Wanda just stares at him, feeling a little dead behind the eyes. She just made tea, and he’s not even going to drink it. He wants her to strip. 

He says he wants to bring her back from the edge, wants to keep her safe. 

But he wants her to strip. 

“Are we going to have sex?” She asks, hoping he realizes the absurdity of the idea. She’s asexual; he knows this. He’s always known this. She will never want it. 

He nods, and reaches his hands towards her jeans, one on her waist, the other on her front. “We don’t have to go all the way. But yes, I think it will be the most effective way.”

“I’m Ace,” she blurts out, just in case he forgot. “I don’t want it.”

He sighs long-sufferingly, moving both hands to grope at her hips, like he could find something sexual in  _ bones,  _ fucking  _ bones.  _ “Look Wanda, I’ve tried to be patient. I get that coming here from Sokovia has been a dramatic shift for you, and that there’s bound to be some… regression. Certainly some fear. But don’t you think it’s time to push past that? Everyone wants sex, it’s just human nature. How about we try it once, and—”

Wanda pushes him backwards, eyes going wide. “I’m  _ asexual, _ ” she repeats, like he didn’t hear her the first, the second, the fiftieth time. “I  _ don’t. Want. Sex.” _

He squares his jaw, scowling. Oh no, Captain Rogers the big, bad Dom is coming out, oh dear. Surely, Wanda should be terrified. She should just drop to her knees right now, strip and beg for forgiveness, let him fuck her, let him— let him—

Why? Because she ‘wants’ it? Because it’s ‘human nature’— or so he claims? Why? 

“You’re young,” Steve says, entirely patronizing. “You’re scared of sex, I understand. But everyone wants it. Asexuality… that’s just a label you hide behind.”

He reaches for her, but Wanda steps back, narrowing her eyes. “Dominant is just a label  _ you  _ hide behind.” 

“What?”

He reaches for her again, and she jerks away, moving to the other side of the island so he can’t touch her. “You know what I think? I think Doms and Subs aren’t real. I think they’re made up designations.” 

“That’s ridiculous—”

“I can’t solve my problems by kneeling!” Wanda exclaimed, desperate. “And you can’t solve your problems by hitting me! These orientations are bullshit, and they do nothing but trap people in situations they don’t want to be in! Dom/sub should be a dynamic, not a way of life. Why can’t we ever turn these fucking  _ role plays  _ off?!”

She could see Steve calculating, trying to decide what the best course of action was. She knew he could dive over the counter and get to her, but she was ready. Her body was tired, but her powers were still there, ever constant. She could hold him back if need be. 

He wasn’t touching her again. 

“What are you trying to say? You don’t think you’re a sub?” Steve scoffs, like just the idea is ridiculous. 

“Oh, I think I’m a sub,” Wanda says firmly, shutting him up. “But I think I’m an Avenger first. I’m an Avenger, then a person, then a woman, then a Sokovian, and then somewhere down the list, a sub. It’s not my entire identity though, and yet you act like it is! Like I can turn everything else off and just be a sub and do as I’m told, and that’s such bullshit. I’m a sub, and the only person that should matter to is my Dom!”

Steve bares his teeth, snarling. “I am your Dom!”

In another time, another place, maybe Wanda would be cowed. But not now. And never again. 

So she bares her teeth in response, meeting his fury with her own. “You were  _ never  _ my Dom. I was coerced into signing a contract with you when I was in a strange country with no other options. If you think what we’ve had this whole time has been a  _ partnership,  _ then you’re just plain delusional.”

“Say that again,” he threatens, practically radiating dominance. “ _ Sub.” _

__ He steps around the counter, and she goes to meet him, hands up and ready to defend herself. “You. Are. Delusional.”

“Then why is your light  _ red.” _

__ Wanda looks down at her monitor, still blinking red. So long, she worked to keep that color in an appropriate range, dilute her emotions, never get too angry for fear of becoming dangerous. But now that she’s here— now that she’s  _ dangerous—  _ she realizes that all along, maybe she should’ve been trying to be red instead of green. 

The thought comes to her in an instant, and the next second she’s raising her hand. Red light slices through metal, and the monitor falls off, useless. All this time, she had the power to take it off herself, and yet she toiled under its weight. 

Steve grabs her with her eyes still caught on the monitor, which really, she should’ve expected. He claps his larger hands around hers, forcing them into fists, as if that will entirely restrain her power. It doesn’t; it doesn’t even come close. She explodes outwards, and he flies across the room, crashing into the wall and making the drywall collapse around him. 

“This is why you need the monitor!” He insists. “You’re dangerous!”

“I’ve always been dangerous!” She yells back, even as she squeezes her fists into balls. She isn’t going to hurt him; her powers are her own, and she gets to decide when to use them. She isn’t their slave. “Now I just have the power to back up my words.”

Steve clambers to his feet, struggling. He’s wearing civvies, Wanda realizes, a t-shirt and jeans and socks, all of which are now splattered with drywall. “Your powers come from the mind stone. They’re dark magic, the same as Loki’s. You have to learn to control them, or they’ll take over entirely. You have to fight back!”

He clenches his teeth nervously as Wanda sends light after him, wrapping around him in whispy hazes. She’s not going to do anything to him, she’s just sensing him, feeling the depth of his heart beat, the tension in his muscles. She pulls her magic back, and it rolls off him in a wave of smoke, evaporating into the air. It does that because she tells it to; because she’s in control. 

"My powers are not dark, or evil, or something I have to fight against,” she tells him, imagining the harshness rolling between them like her magic. “My powers are the only thing I can use to fight  _ back  _ with. They are my only defense against people like you." 

And they are; they always have been. The magic empowers her. She uses it to be strong, to fight monsters, to save the people she loves. And to protect herself against people who don’t love her, not even a little. Steve is in a different league than normal humans, and without her powers, that’s all she would be. So far, her powers have been the only barrier keeping Steve from taking whatever he wants, whenever he wants it. 

Words can only be so strong. Sometimes, they have to be followed through with  _ action. _

“I’m leaving,” Wanda announces. “I’m staying an Avenger. I’m staying on the side of the angels, because despite your issues, your obsession with dominance, and your fucked up ideas, I still believe you’re the good guys. I was given my powers for a reason, and I’m going to use them to help people. But I’m done living here. I’m no longer your sub; if I ever even was.”

Steve sighs, running a hand through his hair. He pushes his shoulders back, never one to back down. “That’s not your decision to make.”

“Actually, it is. My body, my  _ life—  _ my choice. Not yours.” She’s about to turn and leave, when she thinks of something else, and narrows her eyes at Steve. “And if you  _ ever  _ touch me again without my consent, you will be on the receiving end of my powers, and I promise you, you don’t want that.” She raises her hands to chest height, both of them glowing with red energy in a clear threat.

She gets all the way to the door before Steve comes up with a rebuttal. “You have nowhere to go!”

She turns, wondering in the back of her mind if that’s really the best rebuttal he could think of. “No?” She teases, a smirk playing on her lips. Steve sees it, hears her tone, and his serum-enhanced mind latches onto it instantly. Really, it’s almost impressive— though she shouldn’t give him too much credit. Her lies have always been transparent. She’s hidden for months, but she’s never been good at it. 

He laughs self-depricatingly, looking up at the ceiling as if asking for cosmic intervention. “Wow.  _ Wow _ , all this time I wondered how you could possibly avoid a drop using ‘healthy living’. But it wasn't your lifestyle, was it. You had a Dom behind my back this whole time.”

Wanda doesn’t respond, just purses her lips, staying half-turned in the doorway to watch him work it out for himself. 

“I thought it might be possible,” he continues dramatically, “But I got caught on a technicality. The only Dom besides me you interact with are Avengers, and I knew none of them would ever  _ betray  _ me like— oh." 

He must have seen her face as he said the word ‘betray’— the same word he always used to describe Rumlow.  _ He betrayed me. You can't trust him; he's a betrayer. _

__ "Oh," he says again, softer this time. "It's him, isn't it? It's Rumlow."

Wanda tilts her head up, refusing to be ashamed of this. "You know, all the people who say you're an expert battle technician have the right idea. You got it in one." Then she turns, and leaves, slamming the door behind her. 

  
  


———————————

  
  


Despite it being the obvious choice, Wanda did not go to Rumlow. She wasn’t going to run from one man to another, one Dom to the next; she had to take responsibility for her actions, and it was those actions that led her to the check in booth at a hotel in the nearest town. She got a key card using the money she earned Avengering, and climbed up three flights of stairs to get to her room. 

Because her family had never met drama they didn't like, she’s only alone for a few minutes before the door clicks, and the sound of rushing water echoes over from the sink. "Hotels are full of germs, you know," Pietro warns, scrubbing his hands pointedly. "You never know who the last person was to touch those door handles.”

Wanda walks around, leaning against the wall and watching him fuss. "How’d you get in here?"

In response, Pietro pulls out a bright green keycard and tosses it on the counter next to the sink. “Mastercard, it unlocks the whole building. They won’t miss it.”

“Maybe instead I should ask  _ why _ you’re here,” Wanda grumbles. 

He shot her a sharp grin. “My sister’s in distress. It is my duty to offer my counsel.” 

Wanda rolls her eyes, but can’t help smiling. Despite Pietro being allo, and thriving under the Avengers’ strict adherence to traditional Dom/Sub dynamics, it was good to know that he would always be on her side.

  
  


—————————————

  
  


Wanda gives herself 24 hours to stay isolated from Rumlow and the Avengers, going over everything she’d said and trying to decipher if she meant it. In the end, she concludes that she did; she meant it all. 

Multiple times, she finds herself checking his wrist, expecting to see an orange or yellow light, only to be reminded that the monitor is gone. Every time, she finds herself both relieved and nervous; nervous because of how strong her actions were, but relieved because of how necessary they were. In the end, it is a necessary change, and she finds herself appreciating the pale skin of her wrist that she hasn’t seen for so long. 

Finally, after 24 hours have passed and she’s confirmed that her actions were her own, and not the result of some major hormonal blow-out, she packs her things and goes to Rumlow’s apartment. It takes a while to get there, but it is no matter; she’s instantly comforted by the cement flooring of his complex, the familiar sights and smells of it all. She’s been rehearsing what she wants to say to him, and despite being nervous, she’s ready. 

This is where their new life will begin. No more sneaking around, no more lies; from this point on, Rumlow can be her Dom, and Wanda can be his Sub, simple as that. She wants it more than she’s just about wanted anything. In a way, this feels like destiny, every puzzle piece falling into place just as they are supposed to. 

She gets to his door and raises her hand to knock, before realizing it’s cracked. She pushes the door open instead, a question already on her lips, but it gets cut off by a gasp the moment she sees inside. 

The apartment is trashed. Their dishes in the kitchen are all shattered across the floor, the couch overturned and riddled with bullet holes, the tv smashed and in pieces against the wall. The entire apartment is littered with the remnants of battle— the remains of a  _ fight,  _ and a deadly one at that. Wanda sends her powers out automatically, the entire apartment filling with harsh red light, and the report comes back to her in seconds. The entire apartment is destroyed. There are blood stains on the carpet, the walls, the couch. Some of it is unfamiliar, but some of it she recognizes, familiar blood, Rumlow’s blood. 

But aside from that, the apartment is empty. 

Rumlow’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter after this, then the epilogue!
> 
> I'm not giving any spoilers about the final chapter, buuttt.... I just want everyone to casually remember what happens to Rumlow and Wanda in Civil War. That’s all ;)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter before epilogue!

"Where is he?" Wanda demands, bursting through the doors. Her hands are alight with magic, the back of her mind filled with fear. Fear for Rumlow mostly, but also a different sort of fear: the fear of what had been unleashed. Her mind is filled with rage, and she  _ knows  _ in this moment, she is willing to do far more than she should. She will use her powers—  _ any  _ of her powers— to find out where Rumlow is and how she can save him. 

The Avengers all take a moderate step back at her entrance, eyeing her worriedly, but she doesn’t care about them. She marches directly to Steve, who is standing stiffly facing away from her, arms crossed. He glances at her, but doesn’t seem surprised or even worried, and it makes her anger flare even more. If he hurt Rumlow…

In a second, the entire room is bathed in a red glow, red energy flowing around Steve like boa constrictors, growing sharper and tighter with every passing moment. Wanda steps right up to Steve, using her magic to tilt his head towards hers. Her magic is everywhere in the room, and she’s still holding herself back. All she wants is to kill him, to sink her magic into his bloodstream. She’s making herself ask, but she just  _ knows  _ she could invade his brain. It would be so easy to drive him mad right now. Then, she wouldn’t even have to kill him— he’d do that for her. 

Sometimes she terrifies herself, but right now she doesn’t care. Rumlow’s apartment keeps flashing through her mind, the destruction and blood strains, signs of a fight and signs of a loss. She knows the exact color of her lover’s blood, and someone is going to pay for it. 

Steve tilts his head with her magic, eyebrows furrowed and back stiff. She thinks he’s being stubborn at first, until he goes “We didn’t take him— but, we know where he is.”

“We got this video just a couple minutes ago,” Natasha cuts in, gesturing at the tv, which is paused on a ‘replay video’ screen. “Turn off your magic, and you can watch it too.”

Wanda considers, briefly, killing Natasha, but that’s not what she wants. It’s her magic talking, or— fuck, maybe it’s all her. At this point, she doesn’t know which is more disturbing, the witch or the person, she just knows that the combination of her magic and her rage can be deadly. She doesn’t want to kill Natasha, she reminds herself. She just wants to save Rumlow. 

With effort, she retracts her magic back, until it’s barely contained inside her body, practically boiling over. She blinks a few times, making sure her eyes are back to their normal color— they have the tendency of going amber when she nearly loses control of her powers— and then nods to Natasha, who purses her lips and presses play on the tv. Instantly, the large flatscreen is filled with the image of Rumlow. Wanda bites her lip hard at the image. He’s bound to a chair, a bag over his bowed head, and what Wanda can see of his body is beaten and bloody. It was one thing to see the remnants of his apartment, but it’s another thing to see his broken body, clothes stained dark red. And his clothes— they’re all wrong. She can’t explain it, but intrinsically, she knows something’s off about them. He’s wearing a button down that looks too large for him, unnaturally bulky, along with blood-stained jeans that are cuffed at the bottom. His feet are bare.

A man appears in front of the camera, partially blocking out the view of Rumlow. He’s short, a mad-scientist type, bald and tubby and cackling with delight. “Hello Avengers!” He bellowed, voice accented unnaturally. “It is I, Doctor Doom! I imagine you were wondering where your dear, lost Avenger was, well have no fear, HES safe here with me! We’ve been having lots of fun, haven’t we, Crossbones?” He kicks Rumlow’s chair, and Rumlow barely twitches. His breathing is ragged in a way that suggests broken ribs. Wanda would know for sure if she could get her magic on him, but she still doesn’t know where he is. All she can tell by the video is that he appears to be in some sort of warehouse, but that could be anywhere in the country or even the world. She needs to know more. 

“He misses you all dearly, I’m sure,” Doom goads, clearly delighting in his own evil. “Come visit him sometime! We’re in the forgotten city, where graves are marked with motor blocks and nature is taken back all that was stolen. You can try to find us— if you dare. I’m sure Crossbones here would like to see you before his execution tonight. That is, if you get here in time.” He looks at his wristwatch, humming consideringly. “Tik tok, Avengers. I look forward to it.”

The screen goes black, and the replay button pops up again. The video wasn’t even a minute long, and Wanda simultaneously finds herself reeling from the information and needing more. 

“Crossbones,” she whispers. 

“That’s what the media has been calling Rumlow,” Steve explains slowly, not meeting her eyes. “Ever since the mission he went on with us.”

“The media thinks he’s an Avenger,” Clint explains. “My guess, Doctor Doom wanted to make a statement by kidnapping an Avenger, and Rumlow was an easy target. He’s non-enhanced, lives off-campus… you know.”

“We already sent a message to Sam,” Natasha continues. “He’s fine, for now, but is moving to a safe location just in case.”

“Okay,” Wanda says, voice still quiet. Her hands are shaking, and she interlaces them in front of her so her powers don’t shoot out on accident. “Do we know where he’s being held? The… the forgotten city, with motor-block graves?”

Natasha looks to Steve, who nods. “We think it’s Detroit,” Natasha says. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find him. But…”

“It’s too easy,” Tony cuts in, expression stoic. This isn’t the man who flirted with her at the party, this is the man who knows how much blood is on his hands— and is willing to have more. “He all but told us where Rumlow is, and gave us a timeline. It’s gotta be a trap. He gets all of the Avengers to come to his home base, where he has who knows how many reinforcements. We’d be walking into a trap.”

Wanda can’t believe what she’s hearing. “If we don’t go, Rumlow will die.”

Tony puts his hands in his pockets, shifts a little. “And if we do go, who knows how many of us will die. Doom has a huge advantage here— he already got Rumlow, and I may not like the guy, but he’s no slouch. I vote we stay put, call his bluff.”

Wanda looks around at the other Avengers, waiting for them to say something, but no one does. No one backs her up. They’re all content to let Rumlow die, and Wanda feels something deep and dark sink in her stomach. She can go in without their help, but… she had hoped they’d have her back. As much as she hates to admit it, she’s terrified, and she doesn’t want to go in this alone. 

Then the last person she expects clears his throat, looking up from where his gaze was trained on the floor. “Respectfully, Tony, I disagree. We’re the Avengers; we don’t trade lives.”

Wanda stares at Steve, waiting for him to take back the statement, but he doesn’t. He glances at her quickly, meeting her eyes for a meaningful second. “Rumlow is, at the bare minimum… an ally. It’s our job to protect our own, regardless of whether or not we have… interpersonal conflict with him.”

Wanda looks down at her crossed arms, biting the inside of her cheek. “Thank you. Steve.”

He nods, almost imperceptible. 

Tony huffs. “Fine, but we can all acknowledge this is a trap, right? Can we just agree on that?”

“Oh sure,” Natasha says dryly. “It’s not like we’ve ever walked into a trap before. No, definitely not.”

“Alright Romanoff, reign in the sass.”

“We’ll go in prepared for the worst,” Natasha says, ignoring Tony. She looks at Wanda with a look that’s all sympathy as she says “We’ll get Rumlow out.”

“We will,” Wanda agrees, hoping Natasha hears her thanks. “Let’s gear up now; it’s a long flight. Where’s Pietro?”

“He went to get you, but I’ll call him,” Clint says. “In the meantime, get ready; liftoff in ten!”

Everyone jerks into action, moving to tie shoes and get on gear. It takes Wanda a longer moment to compose herself as she looks at the screen again, trying to process everything. Rumlow’s been captured, and now they’re walking into a live trap to retrieve him. She hates it, hates that things can never just be  _ easy,  _ but she accepts it. She can handle it. She has to, otherwise he dies. 

The next few minutes is a blur, and then she’s sitting in the quinjet as it lifts into the air. Steve nearly sits next to her, but he moves to a different bench after she glares at him. She appreciates his help in the common room, but that doesn’t erase her anger at everything else. Her wrist still bears a tan line from that fucking useless monitor.

They get to Detroit and fly over it for a few minutes as Jarvis scans for activity. There are little neighborhoods scattered about, roads and shops and parks, but everything is very close together, narrow and compact. Mostly, there are warehouses— warehouses everything, old brick factories long out of use, the bricks crumbling and roofs caved in. Jarvis identifies a hotspot of heat signatures, and they land a few blocks over. 

“Jarvis spotted a few snipers, and plenty of enemy hostiles,” Steve narrates, unsheathing his glimmering shield. “We’ll go in from the sides, keeping an eye out for any traps or basically anything that looks out of place. Keep your weapons at the ready; hopefully we can beat up some bad guys, take Doom into custody, and get Rumlow out of here. We’ll go from there.”

There’s a chorus of ‘Yes Captain’s from all around the quinjet, but Wanda keeps her mouth shut. Steve is exuding Dominant energy, she realizes, but she’s gotten so used to ignoring his signals she was barely even aware. He looks at her, as if waiting for her to repeat the phrasing, but she can hardly force herself to nod. Sure, she’ll play along with his game plan, but she wasn’t lying when she said she was done being submissive towards him. 

He doesn’t push it, and a minute later they’re landing and unloading, all with weapons at the ready. They split into two groups and start walking, and quickly the silence becomes uncomfortable. Wanda’s walking with Clint and Thor, and neither of them speak, but it’s even more than that; the city seems to be quiet, as if holding it’s breath. They walk in between huge buildings, not as tall as the skyscrapers of New York, but massive in their own accord. There’s graffiti everywhere, and huge plants growing up to cover brick and cement alike. Some of the buildings have huge holes missing from the walls, showing the decrepit insides, also painted with graffiti and plant life. 

_ The forgotten city, where graves are marked with motor blocks and nature is taken back all that was stolen.  _

The most unnerving part must be that, for all that the industry here seems to be abandoned, the city itself is still alive. In the distance, near the residential part of the city, they can hear the sounds of traffic, life continuing as normal. There’s some dog poop in the middle of one of the alleys. Some kids are playing in one of the warehouses, and they go running when they see the Avengers walking past. It’s all very… surreal. 

Wanda makes herself focus, though. She’s not here to explore, she’s here to find Rumlow, and that’s  _ it.  _ She starts sending out her magic in a thin layer, searching the surrounding buildings, and she quickly becomes aware of how  _ not  _ alone they are. Just with a quick search, she can feel multiple heartbeats of rodents and people both. She can almost  _ smell  _ the automatic rifles. 

“I can feel the reinforcements,” she whispers, just loud enough for her teammates to hear.

Clint has an arrow nocked in his bow, and his arms tense subtly. “Should we take cover?”

“No. They’re… standing still. Waiting.”

“Be ready,” Thor murmurs. It’s unnecessarily. Wanda has been ready for violence ever since seeing Rumlow’s blood. Her powers hiss with repressed irritation, just waiting for the chance to expand outwards. 

Maybe she’s not evil, and her powers aren’t evil. Maybe they both just have the capacity of evil, and feed off each other, two entities restless, just waiting for opportunity. It’s a dangerous system, but sometimes you need to be dangerous to make a change.

Soon enough, they move into an empty plaza, the warehouse Jarvis deemed most suspicious right in front of them. The other Avengers emerge from another alley, looking like alley-cats ready to jump. 

A man emerges from the warehouse, and they all raise their weapons, but don’t fire yet. The man is the stout one from the video, Doctor Doom, and appears unarmed. He smiles broadly. “Welcome, Avengers! It is I, Doctor Doom, your new greatest foe!”

“Where’s Rumlow?” Thor bellows, hammer at the ready.

Doom grinned maliciously. “He’s inside, but you’ll never find him on your own! These warehouses can be quite the labyrinths, this one especially! To find him, you’ll need my help!”

“Okay, baldy,” Tony says, raising his repulsors. “Help us.”

Doom laughs loudly, as if the idea is humorous. Behind him, a line of guards files out from the warehouse, standing behind him with rifles on their shoulders. “Why would I do that? You Avengers don’t deserve help, you’re vermin, a disease. You need to be eliminated,  _ vaccinated _ against. The world will only be safe when you’re blown to bits.”

“Hmm, okay,” Tony says, unimpressed. “And then, what? You’ll take over?”

Doom tilts his chin up. “The world needs a leader. I will bring forth a new era, a Golden revolution.”

Tony puts up his face mask, and speaks directly into the Avenger’s comms, saying “Don’t kill him, I want to pick his brain. One of the other baddies we’ve caught recently said something about a Golden Revolution; there may be something bigger going on.”

Wanda hears it, but she can’t find it in herself to care about intel. Rumlow is in danger, and they’re only wasting time. 

“You said something about torturing Rumlow,” she says, hands glowing at her sides. “Care to elaborate?”

“I don’t have time for torture,” Doom says, waving the question away. In the corner of her eyes, Wanda catches a little bit of motion as snipers take their posts on the tops of the buildings. They’re surrounded by snipers in every direction; this must be the trap they were expecting. “Frankly, I don’t have a stomach for torture,” Doom continues. “You’ll see soon enough that my methods are much more… efficient than that. Your dear Rumlow put up a fight when we took him, of course, so my men  _ did  _ have to use considerable force to detain him, but it is no matter. It’s only a matter of time before he stops feeling anything at all.”

“You mean, before you kill him,” Steve says. “Before you execute him, like you said in the video.” 

A sinister smile spread across Doom’s face. “Before I kill all of you, actually. But yes, it will start with Crossbones. His death will explode the world into a new era of great—”

Doom didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence. Before he could, red magic filled every pore in his body and he exploded into a million pieces, splattering his guards with blood and gore. Wanda’s entire body was consumed by magic, and she could almost hear it, the magic from the mind stone hissing in her ears, incredibly pleased. There was a tiny moment of silence as everyone processed what had happened, how quick Doom’s death had been, and then the world descended into chaos. 

The Avengers run for cover, and Wanda blasts the first line of reinforcements back, giving them a few precious moments. A second later, she ducks behind a brick wall, breathing hard. 

Steve is beside her, shield raised, and hand pressing his comm further in his air as the others shout their positions. He looks at her, and it’s the Captain, not the Dom, who says “Go, find him. We’ve got things handled here.”

She nods, and runs. 

  
  


———————————-

  
  


Finding Rumlow isn’t nearly as hard as Doom made it out to be. Wanda’s magic surrounds the entire warehouse Rumlow’s being housed in, and she runs to him, taking turns and leaping over debris without ever questioning a move. Outside, she can hear the sounds of gunfire, but she feels almost as if she’s in a different world entirely. She barely notices the few guards who try and come up against them; her magic burrows itself into their minds almost without her telling it to, corrupting their brains and making them fall over in fits of spasms. It’s fear magic, which Wanda knows mostly because of the images that appear in her mind. She sees people being buried alive, abandoned, betrayed; sees pregnant women fall to the ground, lovers choke and suffocate, families drown. Back when she worked with Ultron, she had to focus to pull someone’s greatest fears to the forefront of their minds, but now it’s easy. She sidesteps the images that threaten to overwhelm her and instead focuses solely on  _ Rumlow.  _ She pictures his eyes, his hands, the quirk of his lips, the tint of his sub-worn skin. She sees him standing in the kitchen, putting dishes in the sink; she sees him underneath her, an arm supporting his head; she sees him in the bath, hair slicked back with water. She sees him over and over again, feels his touch and his voice and his smell as if they’re tangible objects, things she can bury within her mind and keep forever. She pictures him, and follows her magic, drunk off of memories and desperate to get out of here, take him somewhere safe. She wants to  _ be with him _ , today, tomorrow, the day after, again and again, forever. She doesn’t know what their future may look like, or if they even have a future together, just knows she wants it. Just knows she will not let their future be cut short, not today, and not by any meddling villain. She will find him, and she will save him. After so long in hiding, all she wants is to get him, unapologetic and unafraid. She wants the future they’ve earned together. 

Her magic leads her to him. She finds him in a medium sized room with light streaming in from a busted wall. He’s tied to a chair with a bag over his head, just as he was in the video, and she rips the bag off his head to reveal his rapidly constricting pupils. “Wanda,” he gasps, and she doesn’t waste another second. Her magic rips through his bonds, and she pulls him up to his feet. 

“We have to go,” she says, then grabs his hand and run. They sprint back out the way they came, but at the last minute Wanda makes a wrong turn, taking him to the back courtyard instead of the front, where all the fighting is. “The other Avengers are fighting out front,” she explains, out of breath. “Are you injured? I can get you a gun, or you can wait while I help them, then we can leave and—”

“No, no,” he says desperately, clasping her hands. “Wanda, you need to— you need to leave. There’s a trap, a— a trap—” he doubles over, gasping for breath. Wanda remembers his broken ribs, and cringes, supporting him the best she can as he chokes for air. 

“The other Avengers are fighting his henchmen now,” she explains, thinking maybe Rumlow didn’t hear her. “Doom is dead. There is no trap.” 

Rumlow is still gasping, clutching his side helplessly. “No, there’s— the traps already— set. You need to get out of here,  _ now.  _ You have to hurry, we don’t have—”

“Then we’ll go and get the quinjet,” Wanda says. “Or— you stay here, catch your breath. I’ll get the quinjet and pick you up, and then—”

“No!” He gasps, clutching his ribs tighter. “Just you. You have to leave me here, you have to—”

Wanda senses the danger almost too late, and puts up an energy shield just in time to deflect a handful of bullets. A couple of the guards must’ve seen them. Before Wanda’s very eyes, more rush out, and Thor flies overheard, landing in the clearing. More guards file in, shooting from ground level, and Thor fights hard, but he can’t defend them all. Wanda will get Rumlow to safety, then she’ll get the quinjet—

She drags him over to a half-collapsed stairwell, ducking with him behind it. “Wait here,” she orders. “I’m getting you out of here. You need medical—”

“I don’t need medical!” He shouts, and Wanda is taken aback for a moment. Rumlow grabs her hands, squeezing them and making her look at him in the eyes and he talks through gritted teeth. “You need to get the other Avengers and  _ get out of here,  _ it’s not safe—”

“I’m not leaving you!” Wanda insists, and he squeezes harder, jaw clenching painfully. 

“You have to. It’s too late for me. Doom’s plan, his  _ trap _ — he was going to use me to take out the Avengers. He still will, unless you get out of here—”

_ His world will explode the world into a new era of greatness.  _

__ Doom’s words come back against Wanda’s better judgement, echoing in her mind. And suddenly, she understands. 

Her magic wraps around Rumlow, and he holds still, allowing it. Just as she expected, it hits something metal on his chest, something that is very clearly  _ not  _ supposed to be there. 

She steps back just enough to really look at Rumlow, his desperate expression, his strange clothes. “You have to go,” he whispers. “You can’t still be here, when…”

She starts unbuttoning his shirt, needing confirmation. The shirt is large on purpose, and as each button is undone, more and more of the contraption is revealed; the bomber vest, strapped to Rumlow’s chest and prepped to blow. The timer in the center is already counting down, and in red in reads  _ 3:59, 3:58, 3:57.  _

__ The devastation Wanda feels is gradual, a wave that grows bigger with every second. Because some random bad guy of the week thought he could take out the Avengers, starting with the one he deemed the most vulnerable; Rumlow. And now, Doom is dead, and yet the bomb keeps counting down. 

“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” Rumlow whispers, cupping Wanda’s face in his hands. “Look at me, come on, look at your Dom. I have orders for you.”

She meets his eyes, warm and familiar, despite all the death and destruction around them. Now that Wanda is aware of the bomb, her entire body is set to 11. She feels every second that passes, and can all but taste the silver-tinted metal in her mouth. But even more so, she feels Rumlow. He is a world of familiarity in a universe of suffering, and he only has  _ four more minutes to live— _

__ “I have one last set of orders for you, alright?” He says, voice quiet so she really has to listen, eyes following his lips. “I want you to go on the comms and tell the other Avengers to retreat. Then, you run. You go and find the others and you run and run and don’t look back, alright? I’m not going to let this hurt you.”

“I can disarm the bomb,” she says, even as she doubts herself. Her eyes flicker down to it, and she frowns as she tries to decipher it. “I’ve never done it before, but— I will. My powers—”

“No,  _ no, _ ” Rumlow says, cupping her face and making her look at him again. “No disarming, none of that. This thing will go off at a hair trigger, okay baby? There’s no time, you need to get as far away from the blast radius as possible.”

Wanda grips onto his forearms, desperate. “I have to try.”

“No, no, you have to  _ leave—” _

__ Wanda’s eyes go to Rumlow’s lips again. She knows he’s going to keep objecting, but all the same, she knows him. He’s built like a fortress, both his mind and body, but every fortress can be infiltrated. 

“Wanda—” Rumlow says, eyes going wide, but he doesn’t get the chance to finish his sentence. Wanda jerks forward, and then they’re kissing. 

Wanda has never fully understood kissing. She always thought it would be like in the movies, where people treated it like some amazing magical thing, but she never was able to get out of her head enough to enjoy it. Rumlow enjoys it though, she knows. He puts his hand on her waist, kisses back like a dying man— which, of course, he is. They never do this, but he’s always wanted it. She knows how much he wants sometimes, even if he’ll never tell her. He’s always said he doesn’t need all of that, but need is different than want, and he wants desperately. 

Wanda lingers for just a moment, feeling the warmth of his body close to hers, his breath against her lips. Then she pulls back, and her magic surrounds the bomb, searching every molecule for some sort of understanding. She’s never done this before, but she’ll do it now, or die trying. 

Rumlow is still in a daze from the kiss, and he takes a moment to process what she’s doing. Unfortunately, he’s not the only one Wanda had to account for. 

“Wanda, no!” A strong voice yells, and then she’s being pulled backward by her armpits. 

“Get off me, get— off!” She shouts, shooting at Steve blindly with a bolt of magic. He lets go, and they both go falling, rolling backwards on the grass. 

“We have to evacuate!” Steve yells, rushing to help her to her feet. “It’s too late to save him, we have to go!” 

“No!”

“Cut your losses!” He shouts. 

Wanda’s entire body hums with energy. “Cut your fucking dick, you prick! I’m doing this!” 

She blasts him back and scrambles to her feet, running back to Rumlow. Steve gets to his feet faster than she’d expected and his shield goes hurling through the air at her, but she’s faster. A force field erupts around both her and Rumlow and the shield bounces off uselessly. Wanda knows how this goes down; the force field is protecting them from outside attacks, but it’ll also trap them together with the explosion. She’ll try to dismantle the bomb, but if she fails, they both die. Hopefully— hopefully— she can keep the forcefield up for long enough that no one else has to die. 

Rumlow looks miserable. He reaches for her as she comes closer, expression desperate, pleading. “Please, you have to—”

“You’re a soldier,” Wanda says softly, cutting him off. “You know about sacrifice, about risk. You have to let me do this.”

He stares at her for a few seconds, and Wanda doesn’t have to go inside his head to know that he hates this. Finally, though, he nods. “Okay. Okay.”

She pecks him again quickly on the cheek, then steps back. He shucks off the button down, revealing the bomb in its entirety, along with his black tank top. Yeah, that’s the Rumlow she knows. And, if worse comes to worse, that’s the Rumlow she’ll remember— if she remembers anything. 

Her magic surrounds the bomb, prodding at it. She needs to understand how the machine works in order to understand how to diffuse it. She has less than two minutes, too much time wasted fighting, but she doesn’t think about that. Instead, she thinks about metal and fire and war, and for a while, the only thing in her mind is screws and wires. 

Things are very quiet. She is thinking just as hard as she ever has, her mind split into parts but all of the parts at work. With her left hand, she maintains the force field, while with her right she explores the inner workings of the machine. It’s attached to Rumlow in a way that makes it so it will detonate if someone tries to remove it, but surely there is a way to dismantle that feature. Wanda doesn’t need to render the bomb useless, just needs to get it off of him. 

She focuses on her work, which means focusing on her powers. In the back of her mind, she’s aware of the fight going on around her, dirt and shrapnel hitting the force field and bouncing back off. She can feel it all, every particle of change. She can hear her allies shouts bouncing off her magic. She can feel the echo of the bomb’s wires in her brain. And, within every part of her body, she can feel Rumlow’s heart beat. It’s very slow as he tries not to panic, tries not to move. He doesn’t think she can do this, she knows. No— he doesn’t think she  _ should  _ do this. And as her magic grows thicker, surrounding him more intensely, she can feel just the slightest edge of his thoughts, just enough to feel his dread, and even more, his  _ hope.  _

__ She won’t let him down. 

The bomb ticks down to forty seconds, thirty, twenty, and with every passing moment Wanda can feel her powers invade Rumlow more thoroughly. She can feel the scar of a GSW in his thigh, the rush of blood in his veins. She can feel his every thought. She isn’t reading his mind, but he’s projecting his thoughts so aggressively she can’t help but feel them. 

_ I don’t want this for you. I’m scared for you.  _

_ I love you.  _

__ With ten seconds left, something clicks, and the vest releases. Rumlow gasps and Wanda surges forward. The clock is still counting down, and they struggle to pull the bomb off, the edge getting caught on Rumlow’s ear for a moment before finally they rip it off. It’s just counting  _ 4, 3, 2,  _ when Wanda drops the portal and Rumlow thrusts the device into the air. She wraps it in magic right as it explodes. 

When Wanda was ten years old, a shell blasted into her apartment building while she and her family were having dinner. The entire building shook. A hole opened in the floor, and she watched as her parents fell through, unable to do anything about it. And as the floor crumbled, the ceiling split and plaster rained down, the world collapsing and upending itself.

She feels like that now. She feels a sharp burst of light, and then years and decades of energy being released into her body. She knows energy, knows about the potential locked up in every molecule, knows on a personal level how atom bombs just wait and wait and wait, wait for the chance to finally burst into existence. And she feels it now; feels the energy from the bomb rip into her, tear her at the seams, trust her backwards. There is light, and there is energy, and there is heat. And underneath her, the floor opens up, and there is nothing. 

That is what it feels like to try and contain the bomb with her magic. She only barely manages it, and then everything is white, and it takes her a long time to hear Rumlow’s yells. Then finally, her vision comes back to focus, and she remembers where she is, what she is— alive, at least for now. She’s lit up like a Christmas tree, and in the background of her mind she can smell her hair burning, but she’s alive, she’s here, and so is Rumlow. They survived. They— they made it. 

“Wanda! Wanda!” He yells, leaning over her. She’s on the ground, she realizes, and when she props herself up she sees that she’s at least a hundred feet away from where she’d been standing. She must have been blasted back by all the energy she tried to absorb, judging from the still-smoldering trench her body plowed in the dirt. 

She looks around herself, taking note of the Avengers taking out the last few guards. Good; that’s good. The fighting is all strangely muffled, and it’s only then that she realizes she put up another forcefield around her and Rumlow. Ha— go figure. 

Yeah, maybe she’s not in as much control of her powers as she thought. 

She has to find the part in her mind that’s holding up the forcefield and actively get it to drop it. When she does, her body drops back against the soil, finally allowed to relax, all of her magic shut off. She may have overextended herself just a teeny, tiny bit. 

“You’re the fucking worst,” Rumlow exhales desperately, smoothing her hair back from her face. “The fucking worst. Jesus fuck, what did I sign up for.”

A laugh bubbles up from Wanda’s chest, amused at Rumlow’s panic. “If I knew this is what it took to get you to lose your cool I would’ve blown myself up long ago,” she teases, and Rumlow grunts loudly, pulling her and clutching her to his chest. She holds onto him as tightly as her numb limbs can, letting her head hang over his shoulder. 

She can barely remember to breathe, she’s so tired. That’s fine though; now that she’s in Rumlow’s arms, she’s safe. This is why people have dominants; she just went and did everything she could, pushed herself to the limit and then some, and now he is here for her to come to, a safe place to rest. He can have control now; Wanda will willingly give it to him. 

_ God.  _

__ She falls asleep like that, in his arms with his thumb smoothing across the scar on her cheek, and the smell of her own burnt flesh in her nose. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, how could I not include the bomber vest?? The only time Wanda and Rumlow interact in the mcu is when Rumlow blows himself up and Wanda puts a force field around him so he blows up _extra hard_. It would be rude not to acknowledge canon 😏🤷♀️
> 
> Also, I'll be gearing up to write a new fic soon! Any requests in terms of pairings/themes? I'm wanting to write more rarepairs, especially straight/lesbian pairings. Do you want some Rumlow/Natasha? Some Clint/Wanda? Some ot3's? Are we wanting more canon divergence, or are we feeling alternate universes? Let me know what you guys are into ;)


	11. Epilogue

The ropes feel like they're cutting into her skin. With every tiny movement, the entire web of red ropes shifts, pulling at different parts but still restraining her, keeping her locked down tight. She's blindfolded, the blindfold thick and leather and buckled at the back. Also buckled at the back is the gag in her mouth, a ball that she digs her teeth into. All of this is fine on it's own; she's been in bondage and deprivation before. But what's hard is the pain. Underneath her bent legs, she is resting on a cobblestone mat, the various bends and curves of the stones digging in to her sensitive calves and knees. It hurts like shit, hurts more than it has a right to, and the pain makes it even harder to concentrate. 

Her powers are spread out across the apartment. It's Rumlow's old apartment, now their shared one. After Rumlow was kidnapped, they had to clean it and purchase some new furniture, not to mention update the security, but they agreed that they both had too much of an attachment to the place to move somewhere else. Now, Wanda can feel every nook and cranny in the place. She can't see, but she can imagine her powers casting the entire room in a red light, subtle enough not to notice upon first glance. 

In her predicament, Wanda has been given a simple task: stack the plates drying in the sink, and put them away in the cupboards. It's something she's done before, but never like this, with her eyes obscured and hands bound so tightly behind her. The pain from the mat is distracting, and as she shifts she can feel her magic shuddering. Her mental image of the room, created by the tendrils of magic reaching across it, temporarily blinks out of existence. For a second she thinks  _ why am I doing this, why does it matter--  _ and then there is a hand in her hair, yanking her backwards and forcing her to put more of her weight on the mat beneath her. She squeals angrily through the gag, and Rumlow smacks her hard on the shoulder. "Come on. Don't let yourself get distracted." 

She huffs, angry, but refocuses. Her calves are in a position that she can maintain, especially if she doesn't focus on it, so she brings her attention back to her magic. Mentally, the room snaps back into focus, and she strains to lift the plates from the sink without using her hands to direct the magic. 

"Good girl," Rumlow says again, behind her. He's carding his hands through her hair and its infuriating and distracting. She wants his hands on her  _ now,  _ goddamnit. She wants to only focus on that, to drop into subspace and give herself over to him. But that's not the point of this exercise. This is training, not recreation, which means she can't give into his touch, no matter how good. 

She manages to put the distractions out of her mind enough to put half the dishes away. It's a difficult enough task on it's own, and the fact that she's able to do it with so much else going on shows just how powerful her powers have grown over the past few months. Her Uncle Loki came to the house a week earlier, and talked to her about how there are no true limits to her powers, only limits to what she is capable of harnessing. 

_ "What does that mean?" Rumlow had asked, sitting on the couch beside her. Loki was sitting on the easy chair across from them, and he folded his hands, smiling sinfully.  _

_ "It means there is a limit to what her body and her mind can handle. When she uses her hands to direct the magic, she is using her hands to harness a small, direct amount of power. But she has to use her body for it too, on a bigger scale, as well as her mind. The more she trains, the more powers she can wield, though there's always the chance of using too much power and having it implode her mind."  _

_ "The point is that I need to train," Wanda said, directing a sharp look to Rumlow. "So that doesn't happen."  _

_ Rumlow nodded seriously, considering. "I… I guess you're right. Not imploding is good."  _

_ "Not imploding is very good," Loki agreed.  _

__ Wanda doesn't know how much of her powers she'll eventually be able to harness, but the more, the better. She takes pride in her role as an Avenger, and now that she's been promoted to a full-level Avenger, the urge to prove herself is only stronger. 

Though she's still blindfolded, Wanda takes notice of Rumlow walking across the room, disturbing the energy. She tries to focus in on him, and immediately is sent back more data than she knows what to do with-- the movement of his hair, the texture of his skin, the smell of his sweat. He turns toward her, and she can practically  _ feel  _ the want in his eyes. It makes her tremble. 

Across the room, the plate she has half-way out of the sink starts to shudder, and she's forced to drop it onto the counter with a loud clink. She's breathing hard, the ropes around her keeping her from inhaling too deeply. 

"Do you need a break?" Rumlow asks, and it's an insult. "We can stop if you need. If you can't do it." 

God, but what she'd give to shove him at a time like this. She almost considers using her powers to do it, but she needs to focus. 

She has a couple more dishes put away when Rumlow stalks towards her. She forces herself to divert the majority of her energy to the task at hand,  _ not  _ to sensing Rumlow's impending progress, so is surprised when she feels his hands on her knees. She yells in horror when he shoves her knees apart, unbalancing her on the cobblestone mat and causing more painful bruises to form at once. "Aw, I'm sorry, I really am," Rumlow says. "You're just going so slow, I thought I'd give you extra incentive." 

Three things happen at once. One, Wanda pulls all of the remaining dishes from the sink; two, Rumlow pushes down on her thighs, making the rocks dig in even harder; and three, Wanda's magical grasp on the apartment blinks out. She is left completely in the dark, levitating the dishes somewhere by the cabinet without knowing how close or even being able to tell if they were facing the right way. She simply has to hold her concentration, keeping them there, as her mind splutters and desperately tries to regain her image of the room. 

All the while, Rumlow tortures her. He sits directly in front of her, so close their legs are touching, and plays with the rope that binds her, tugging and tightening it. He rubs the insides of her thighs; a part of her body she's only just recently become comfortable with him touching. He plays with her hair. And, right as she regains her mental map and is about to direct the plates to their resting spot, he slaps her across the face. 

The plates drop three feet before her magic pools around them, catching them in what she imagines is a thick red glow. Rumlow slaps her again, just for funsies, and she uses the second of hesitation he takes between annoyances to push the plates into place and ding the little bell by the sink, signally the task is done. 

"Good girl," he says, and stands, scooping her up like it's simple. She shrieks, wiggling in his grip, but he just slings her over his shoulder, his grip tight on her still-bound legs. "That time took you 6 minutes. Tomorrow, we're doing it again, and we're aiming for 5, okay?" 

Wanda mumbles behind the gag, trying to say "Yes sir" but it comes out more like "mss frr". Rumlow adjusts his grip on her, and a minute later she feels the gag come loose, pulled away. 

"Yes sir," she pants, still bound and blind but at least able to speak. "Yes sir." 

"And if you don't do it in five, do you know what that means?" 

Wanda knows. She fucking loves it. "Yes sir," she says quickly. "The cane." 

"Fucking right, the cane," Rumlow agrees, hefting her up a little higher over his shoulder. "15 strokes. Maybe I should give you a taste…" 

He flips her over onto the couch, not being nice about it. She has only a second to writhe before he drags her into place, and demands "Color?" She barely has time to get out "Green!" before the cane comes down over her clothed ass, and she screams into the couch. 

He gives her 5 lashes, each worse than the last. When it's finally over, he unties her legs first, then her chest, then her arms. The blindfold comes off last, and she gasps as if it's her air being returned, not her sight. 

"Goddamn," he mutters, looking at her legs. "Those are going to bruise real well." 

Wanda sits up just enough to see her calves, and shit, yeah they will. "Fuck." 

"Fuck is right," Rumlow agrees. He plops down on the end of the couch, puts a pillow over his crotch-- Wanda only has to glance to know he's hard-- and gestures for her to come to him. "Come on, get over here. You did good."

Wanda hadn't had a chance to fall into her full subspace, but her entire body was sore from his ministrations, her mind exhausted, and she was more than happy to crawl across the couch to rest in his lap. "I did good?" She asks in a low hum, even though he already said it. 

"So fuckin' good," Rumlow agrees, rubbing her back soothingly. "The best." 

Wanda leans upward to kiss him on the cheek, and he grins down at her, giving her one too. "Fucking love you," Wanda mutters, feeling herself start to doze off. She always gets extra sleepy after pain play. 

"Yeah, you too," Rumlow agrees. "Now sleep it off, we've got time." 

And they did.

  
  


\--------------------

  
  


The hallway is so quiet it almost feels eerie, Steve thinks as he walks down it. The soft red carpet absorbs his footsteps, and he counts the door numbers as he goes by.  _ 456, 458, 460, 462-- _

__ At  _ 464 _ \-- the 64th apartment on the 4th floor-- he stops. Puts his hands in his pockets. Takes them out to knock. Puts them back in. 

The thing is, it's come to his attention recently that he's an  _ awful  _ dom. The situation with Wanda was hellish, and looking back, he's pretty embarrassed. Every signal he was given, he ignored, even opportunity to communicate he abused. He thought a power dynamic was about one person taking control of the other, showing that they know what's best for the other without ever asking their opinion. He was fucking  _ wrong. _

__ A fellow Avenger made this issue known, in a rather heated discussion a few nights prior, and Steve's been thinking about it ever since. He was invited to their apartment to learn how to do better, and see what it looks like to be an actual dom. 

Though most of the Avengers live in the tower, there is one-- aside from Wanda-- who doesn't. That is also the only other Avenger to have a monogamous dom/sub relationship, and therefore the Avenger most qualified to help Steve out. Regardless, Steve is still nervous. He isn't quite sure what to expect, and hates having to admit how wrong he was. But if he wants to get better-- as in, ever get better, as in ever have  _ hope  _ to have a real, healthy relationship-- then this is his best shot. 

The door opens to reveal a short, lean man wearing a short sleeve button down shirt, trousers held up by suspenders, and a newsboy hat. His eyes go wide when he sees Steve, and he immediately turns back to the apartment and yells "Mistress Natasha! Your guest is here!" 

Steve is aware of Natasha coming from one of the rooms, inviting him in, but he's too focused on the man in front of him to care. Natasha seems to notice, and gives him a rueful smile. "Steve, I see you've met my sub. Steve, this is Jamie." 

Jamie sticks out his hand to shake, a playful smile already on his lips. "Nice to meet you, sir. Only Mistress Natasha calls me Jamie; you can call me Bucky." 

"Bucky is it," Steve says, a little dreamily. 

Natasha gives him a coy smile. "This is going to be fun, I can already tell. Steve, come on in, we've got lots to discuss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised you all an epilogue, didn't I ;)? Dont forget to comment, and feel free to subscribe to my author's page to get updated on my upcoming stories-- there may be a Wanda/Steve pwp coming soon, though I promise steve is much more fun in that story. Have a great day!


	12. Role Reversal

When reading this fic, were there any points where you went "okay, but what if Wanda was the dom?" If so, I've got the story for you! Yesterday I posted a fic called "Raise Some Hell Before We Go" in which Rumlow is an Alpha and a slave, bought by small, omega Wanda. The story will have more sex, more kink, and more powers mischief than this one, and I think that if you liked this story you will genuinely like the next! Please give it a read, and let me know what you think! I think it's a super interesting story but so far it's gotten no attention-- literally only my friend has read it, which sucks, because my gay slavefic was my most popular book ever. Give wanda some love :(

Heres the summary: 

Rumlow is a slave bought by the last person he would've expected: a female omega named Wanda. But the situation may not be as dire as it seems; maybe, he thinks, he can help Wanda embrace her Omega side, turning her into the perfect, submissive mate, and allowing Rumlow to get out of the situation with his pride intact.

Wanda has different plans.

I hope you check it out!

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you thought! And, if you are asexual, I’d love to get feedback about the accuracy of the portrayal and hear if you have any notes for me. 
> 
> Have a great day!


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